


Battle Scars

by Resa_Saso



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: AU, Dream sabotage, F/M, M/M, Rose Tyler & Thirteen travelling because hell yes, The Master has to work for his forgiveness here, Time War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-03-03 03:37:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13332675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resa_Saso/pseuds/Resa_Saso
Summary: She screamed and screamed without hearing any sounds. She couldn't see Rose's horrified face, or the Master's insistent blankness. All she could see was her people, dying in front of her eyes, again, again, again, until Gallifrey seemed to have exploded inside of her mind forever, until it seemed there was nothing else left of her but its end.It was then, the Master spoke.“I've lost my TARDIS. I have nowhere to go. If you want to, you can leave me here.”|| Being responsible for the Doctor's actions in the Time War, the Master has to earn his forgiveness this time. And it doesn't come easily. ||





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So, this is an AU fanfic with Thirteen & Rose travelling together and finding the Master at the end of the universe, for no other reason than me only noticing I wrote the wrong Doctor's POV three chapters in. I really love Thirteen. In case that isn't clear yet. (It starts off with Eight/Jacobi though, because my reader's need to be informed, so there's that :D)
> 
> So, nothing else is different, actually. Nine picked up Rose, regenerated, and didn't lose her in Doomsday, obviously, because I needed someone to be poor Master's friend in here and I couldn't imagine Martha in that role.   
> The rest is just cosmic angst. Enjoy! :)

__ Do you remember when we learned how to fly?  
We'd play make-believe; we were young and had time on our side.  
You're stuck on the ground,  
Got lost, can't be found.  
Just remember that you're still alive.  
  
[ Paradise Fears - Battle Scars ]   


 

 

 

He was cold. It was the first real feeling he had experienced in quite some while, but instead of welcoming it, he silently cursed at it, wished it gone.  
  
He was dying, wasn't he? Ready to become someone new, a new soldier amidst a lost war. He shuddered.  
  
It was then the Doctor started to look around, realizing he was in a hospital. It was completely overcrowded, all beds filled with restlessly sleeping shadows in the darkened room, beds standing in the small passages, people lying on the ground with nothing but blankets and pillows to soften their stay.  
  
The Doctor sighed and even this slight movement hurt. He looked down at him and saw a bled-through bandage on his waist. His head hurt when he tried to think back, but he remembered Daleks, debris falling down on them, the cries of victory from the army behind him, which then turned to absolute horror, he remembered something heavy and painful tumbling down on him and then nothing but wonderful, peaceful darkness.  
  
Someone must've made it out alive the fall of Arcadia. Someone must've brought him here.  
  
“That would've been me.”  
  
The Doctor flinched at the voice and looked to the other side of his bed. A man had been sleeping on a chair next to him. His somehow ageless face was covered in blood, dirt and small wounds, his silvery hair lay damp on his head, but his eyes seemed intelligent and sharp and so incredibly _alive_. More alive than all these dull and hopeles eyes he had looked into the last few battles.  
  
The Doctor stared wordlessly, then remembered how to take use of his voice.  
  
“Are you in my head?”  
  
The man snorted. “No need to. You're quite easy to read right now, I assure you.”  
  
“Oh,” the Doctor said. He didn't know what else to retort. That really wasn't something he'd been told often. “So you took me here? What about the others?” he finally added.  
  
The man frowned. “There was no time to save all of them,” he replied slowly. “The Daleks were already recovering. I dragged you out from that rock and ran for my life.”  
  
The Doctor remained silent for a few seconds, then sighed.  
  
“So we lost Arcadia.”  
  
The silver haired man nodded. “I'm afraid so.”  
  
For a while, none of the men spoke. The Doctor's cold was creeping up at him again, froze him from inside out at the thought of a universe ruled by Daleks, the thought of all these men he had led into a losing battle, dead on the ground, slain by a crashed ceiling and the Dalek's triumph. He wanted nothing but for this war to end, the horror to be over, but at this point, ending the war meant Daleks at power. And he couldn't let that happen, not ever.  
  
So he had to kept on fighting a war that would never, ever be won.  
  
“Rassilon,” the man broke the silence. “He's been pretty useless, hasn't he?”  
  
The Doctor looked up to him with widened eyes. The Time Lords were keeping all their hopes on their returned leader, were blindly following his lead since he had been resurrected. The last thing he had expected was for someone to talk so bluntly against his commands.  
  
“I don't think there's anything anyone can do at this point,” he replied cautiously, not sure whether he was to be tricked into talking bad about their Lord President or simply drawn into confidence.  
  
The man snorted and suddenly there was something about his expression that seemed oddly familiar to the Doctor.  
  
“You don't really think that, do you? Giving up isn't like you at all, my dear.”  
  
The Doctor thought about that for a second. Watched it all again in his head. The Master desperately trying to steal his body to being able to regenerate. The Master falling down the Eye of Harmony, screaming, refusing to take his hand, having achieved none of his goals. The war starting, the pure horror of being alone where someone should've been at his side, the realization that, with the Master, he could've beaten them all. The dreams that kept on hunting him, night for night, of him and the black, cold eye in the centre of his TARDIS, mocking him, punishing him, hurting him.  
  
Only when he was finished and reached once again the undeniable conclusion that the Master was – indeed – dead, he allowed himself to think about the man's words.  
  
“I think, this time I really do think that,” he finally answered truthfully.  
  
The man looked terrified for a second, but quickly hid the expression away from his face again.  
  
“Well, I don't,” he replied, suddenly seeming cold in his determination.  
  
“The Time Lords are having some tricks up their sleeves, though they may be too afraid to use them... yet.”  
  
The Doctor frowned. “What are you talking about?”  
  
The man leaned forwards, looking into his eyes with an intense glare. It became quite clear from the look in these dark, sparkling eyes, that this had been what he had wanted to talk about all along.  
  
“There's something not even Rassilon dares to speak of. They're hiding it in their archive, buried underneath years and years of silence, but I know it is there, I have always known. It's called _The Moment._ ”  
  
The Doctor was watching him carefully, the determined bows of his eyebrows, the sparkling, clever eyes, the hard but somehow intriguing lines of his face and the way he talked about something so dangerous and feared, even the Time Lords had fallen silenced about it – With glee.  
  
The Doctor then decided this man was the Master after all. He didn't know how and he didn't want to know, it was something he had given up wondering about ages ago.  
  
He raised an eyebrow.  
  
“So, what is The Moment then? A mass destruction weapon, I assume?”  
  
The Master nodded.  
  
“And you want me to use it on the Daleks?”  
  
Now he hesitated, only a second, but enough for the Doctor to stare up at him in shock.  
  
“You want me to... How could I possibly do _that_?”  
  
“I don't know,” the Master said. “I don't know. All I know is that you're the only one who _could_ do it. All the others, they don't even dare thinking about it, Doctor.”  
  
“For good reason!” he replied loudly, then quickly lowered his voice to not wake up one of his sick roommates. “What about you? Isn't this usually your kind of alley?”  
  
The Master smiled, not his usual, slight arrogant but charming smirk, but a smile that was bitter and sad. “You do realize of course, that you suggesting I should use it instead of you... Is agreeing it's necessary?”  
  
The Doctor sighed.  
  
“Necessary... I don't know. It would end the war. It would leave the universe at peace. Or that what will be left of it. But how would I ever live with myself?”  
  
He was aware he was questioning the wrong person with issues of morality, but he couldn't help it. The Master, however, shrugged.  
  
“You wouldn't have to. Activate the moment, and not only the Daleks and the Time Lords get wiped out, but you with them, naturally.”  
  
“And you with us,” the Doctor replied out of a thought. “That's not like you at all. What is going on, why are you...”  
  
“We've lost, Doctor. I don't want to live in a universe enslaved by the Daleks. I don't. And I hate to see you like that.”  
  
“Beaten?” the Doctor smirked. “That's new.”  
  
“A soldier.”  
  
Funnily enough, it was that answer that made the Doctor believe him.  
  
“It might be... a solution,” he muttered and he felt bad the second he spoke, but the Master had a point. A universe ruled by Daleks wasn't a universe worth living for and they had lost, oh how they'd lost.  
  
“It's the only chance this universe has, Doctor,” the Master answered bitterly.  
  
The Time Lord sighed once more.  
  
“You couldn't do it, could you, Master? All your striving for power, all the terrible things you have tried to do, and now there's your chance and you can't do it.”  
  
The Master had started to smile the second his name fell from the Doctor's lips, and even though it turned into something sad along the way, he kept it.  
  
“I couldn't do it,” he confirmed. “That's why we need you.”  
  
  
  
When the Doctor woke up again, the Master was gone, but not the idea he had planted inside his head.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Take it out on me

_It's not over,_  
 _You don't have to throw it away._  
  
_So scream if you wanna, shout if you need..._  
 _Just let it go._  
 _Fight if you need to, smash if it helps you..._  
 _Get control_  
 _Take it out on me!_

[Thousand Foot Krutch - Take it out on me ]  
  


  
  
  
“He has a fob watch,” Rose suggested.  
  
The Doctor shook her head. “Don't be ridiculous.”  
  
“I am not. He's having the same fob watch as the one you showed me. He's...”  
  
“He's just an old man! Trying to save the people from the end of the universe. Old men have fob watches.”  
  
“An incredible intelligent old man, saving people with _food_.”  
  
“Many people can be saved with food.”  
  
“Not like this, not like he did. Stop pretending like you don't know what I'm trying to say.”  
  
“I wasn't... Oh well, maybe a little.”  
  
“What if he's a Time Lord?” Rose insisted. “It's possible, isn't it? He could have survived your war over here, disguised as a human, couldn't he?”  
  
The Doctor suddenly looked worried. “When you saw the fob watch... did you tell him?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
„Can he see it, Rose? Have you made him aware it exists?”  
  
“What the hell are you on about, why wouldn't he know it exists?” she asked, but the Doctor had already started running. She threw back the words “Reception filter” over her shoulder, but Rose frowned while running after her, deciding they were no explanation at all.  
  
“What's a reception filter?” she asked while they reached the room they had left Professor Yana in. The Doctor slithered in, facing the old man who was watching her with a slightly raised eyebrow.  
  
In an instant, she had suppressed her hectic breathing and exchanged her worried look for a frantic, wide grin which was just as fake as Jackie Tyler's tan.  
  
“Professor, I was wondering if you, eh, knew what time it is?”  
  
Rose shook her head with painfully squeezed eyes. Asking for the time at the end of the universe was a bit much, even for her. With a suppressed smile, she watched the Doctor, who seemed to be aware of her thin question but studied the Professor's face with wide eyes.  
  
Something like realization seemed to dawn her, because she took a step back from him, looking shocked.  
  
Professor Yana smiled gently.  
  
“It's a filter that keeps your mind from realizing something, like, say, the fact that the watch that's keeping your Time Lord self is right in front of you. You know it's there, in the corner of your mind, but something else just keeps on distracting you, you see?”  
  
Rose stared at him wordlessly, while the Doctor just sighed.   
  
“That wasn't the time,” she finally noted.  
  
“Well, Doctor, no one ever told you it's quite impolite not to answer a question?”  
  
“So you opened the watch, have you?”  
  
The Professor nodded.  
  
“Great.” And with a loud, smacking sound, she had slapped the man in the face.  
  
Rose gasped. “Doctor, what the hell!”  
  
She jumped to the Professor to support him, but he shook her away, irritated.  
  
Suddenly, he didn't seem to be the kind hearted old genius he had been before, there was something sinister and dark in the corner of his eyes, while he looked at her and straightened his tie indignantly. He seemed older than before, Rose noticed. Something about him seemed to have aged in the same way the Doctor seemed to be older than she looked, sometimes. In this awful way that made her look tired and lost, broken and yet wise.  
  
Oh yeah, he was a Time Lord, alright. And obviously not one the Doctor was a huge fan of, because her eyes had grown ice cold.  
  
And here Rose had thought, only for a second, the Doctor might be happy not to be the very last of her kind. Now she had finally found someone else from her planet, someone _alive_ , and was acting like this. Rose silently wondered about fairness in the universe. All the Doctor did was protecting it all her life long and all the universe did was screwing her over, again and again.  
  
Couldn't it have been her long lost husband or something?  
  
“How dare you,” the Doctor spit at his face this second. “How dare you show your face to me ever again?”  
  
The Time Lord stared at her. “It's not like you recognized my face before two minutes ago!” he grumbled.  
  
The Doctor's eyes widened in her rage. “Well, I tried my best to forget it! And you've aged. A lot. You look like a scarecrow.”  
  
“If you're trying to hurt me with my looks, I'm afraid that's not going to have any eff...”  
  
“You're right,“ she gave back sharply and then punched him right on his mouth. The Time Lord stumbled back, trying to support himself on the table behind him and thereby pushing off his computers. The Doctor watched without any movement on her angrily frozen face.  
  
Rose flinched. She had never seen her Doctor this angry before and it was honestly scaring her. She didn't dare to help the man up again, but he didn't seem to mind. With a hand on his nose and the other one trembling and supporting his body on the table, he got up, still looking at the Doctor with an infuriating calmness.  
  
“Finished?” he asked. It didn't even sound annoyed, only openly asking.  
  
For the first time, Rose wondered what he had done to her. What had he done to make him think he deserved this treatment? To think he deserved even more of it?  
The Doctor was watching him with the same grim expression on her face, then nodded once, sharp and short.  
  
The other Time Lord nodded, too.  
  
For a while, nobody said a word, then the Doctor was the one breaking the silence. Rose shivered at the sound of her voice, showing no other emotion than cold, pure anger.  
  
“I thought you had died.”  
  
The Time Lord shook his head quickly. “Ran away the same night. Hid away as far as I could. Used the chameleon arch to disguise myself.”  
  
“Coward. What were you afraid of? The weapon you suggested yourself or my wrath?”  
  
The Time Lord smiled. “Both.”  
  
“Oh, what a great way to ensure you don't have to face the consequences of your deeds!” She shouted now. Rose had never heard her shouting like this. “They're all dead! Every single one, but me, but us, all dead!”  
  
She was watching the Time Lord now, obviously waiting for a reaction, some kind of regret, guilt, anything at all, but he was just looking at her with an expressionless face.  
  
He nodded again.  
  
With an angry scream, the Doctor began shoving the instruments behind her to the ground. Table for table she ran through the laboratory, kicking them down, trashing the instruments and complicated constructions another man had built, a man that somewhere lived inside this cold monster, a man that might have been worth her love one day, if it wasn't for the Time Lord suppressing every single thing _good_ about him. At his second, she had never hated him more.  
  
She had told herself he had made a mistake. Told herself he hadn't wanted to torture her, in the few first hours of his betrayal, when she had woken up and realized she wasn't dead, but everyone else was. Every day that passed, every day she had desperately looked for life, for Gallifrey, for even one voice calling for help and found nothing, her heart had grown colder with the realization. This had been the Master's last deed, she had thought. His final mean to destroy her, more effective than anything else he had ever done to her, because it had _worked_.

She had broken, just as he had intended.  
  
And if it wasn't for Rose, if she hadn't met this wonderful, human girl, full with love and compassion, all these things she had banned from her life, had decided she didn't deserve anymore, she would've never seen any light again.  
  
And now he had the audacity to return, to not be dead, to come back and taunt her further, to not show any interest in their dead people, in her guilt. She wanted to smash his face, wanted to hurt him, instead of shoving table for table down.  
  
But she didn't.  
  
Because somewhere inside of her, buried deeper than her guilt, buried deeper than her pain, her loss, her darkness, there was the place she had buried her affection for the Master. And this place was glowing, warming her up from the inside, rejoicing in the knowledge that he was alive. That she wasn't alone. And even though she wanted nothing more than to put a lid on it and never let this place see the light of day again, she couldn't, she just couldn't. And with a last scream of rage, she sank down against her TARDIS wall, seeking solace in the only friend she had left in the whole universe, when everything had come to an end and the Master's betrayal had made her cold.  
  
She commanded her tears away and didn't even notice when they actually left. She screamed and screamed without hearing any sounds. She couldn't see Rose's horrified face, or the Master's insistent blankness. All she could see was her people, dying in front of her eyes, again, again, again, until Gallifrey seemed to have exploded inside of her mind forever, until it seemed there was nothing else left of her but its end.  
  
It was then, the Master spoke.  
  
“I've lost my TARDIS. I have nowhere to go. If you want to, you can leave me here.”  
  
She stopped dead.  
  
Leaving him here, at the end of the universe, all alone? It seemed to be fair and she might have considered it in her anger, if it wasn't for the sound of his voice. It wasn't a provocation, it wasn't a challenge, it was him knowing it was fair and suggesting it because of that. It was him wanting to remedy her rage.  
  
She looked at Rose, who shook her head at her with silent tears in her eyes.  
  
“You can't,” she mouthed, but not a sound left her lips, seemingly trembling in fear. “You can't.”  
  
No, she couldn't, could she? That wasn't who she was, that was who the Master was. It might have been fair, but she was _kind_.  
  
Never cruel, never cowardly. The only thing she'd learned from the hell she had come out alive. The only thing she was living by now, the only thing keeping her upright in all her guilt was trying to be a better person now.  
  
She shook her head.  
  
“I can't.”  
  
Had she looked at Rose, she would've seen the girl sigh in relief. But she looked at the Master and no sign of relief, no movement at all was showing on his face. It was still masked perfectly, frozen without any expression.  
  
“You're coming with us,” she said hoarsely.  
  
And without even looking back, she got up and stepped into her TARDIS. He was going to come. He was going to do as she said. He was not the one in control now.  
Behind her, the Master and Rose exchanged a glance. He smiled a shaky smile, trying to reassure her and gestured her to enter behind the Doctor. She looked at him for a few seconds, not moving, then stepped in.  
  
The Master took a deep breath, bracing himself, then followed her.  
  


 

 


	3. Already Over

_I'd give it all to you..._   
_Letting go of me..._   
_Reaching as I fall._   
_I know it's already over now.._   
_Nothing left to lose._

[ Red - Already Over ]

 

 

It didn't go exactly well, but none of the new TARDIS crew had expected it to.  
  
Rose was still in shock of the scene that had occurred in front of her, while the Master seemed to be eager to keep in the background and draw as less attention to him as possible. All he did seemed to only serve the purpose of giving the Doctor some peace, but she was far from it.  
  
Aggressively, she had steered the TARDIS back to Earth in Rose's time. The blonde had wondered if this was the Doctor's way of telling her to get out, but otherwise completely ignored it. The Doctor then had stamped the corridor down to her bedroom and slammed the door.  
  
She didn't exactly want to ask what had happened. From what she had listened to at the end of the universe, the other Time Lord seemed to have been responsible for the Doctor's actions in the Time War. Now, she had never truly heard her friend talk about what happened back then and she wasn't going to ask this stranger now. She was going to tell her when she was ready, that had always been Rose's devise.  
  
She turned around to look at the Time Lord a bit more and saw with shock, that he had dropped his facade. His hands were trembling and tears were glinting in his eyes. When he noticed Rose's attention, he looked at her with an expression on his face that was almost pleadingly.  
  
“Don't leave.”  
  
“You hardly know me,” Rose gave back hesitantly.  
  
The Time Lord smiled sadly. “Doesn't matter,” he replied. “She needs you. Don't leave, no matter what she does or says to make you.”  
  
“Why would she want me to leave?”  
  
“Because that's who she is. If things get nasty, she tries to take everyone off the battlefield but herself.”  
  
“I'm not leaving,” Rose promised. Two things dawned to her and both were scary and fascinating at the same time.  
  
First, she liked this stranger, who was obviously concerned about the Doctor, but wouldn't let _her_ see it.  
  
And second, he knew her. He really, really knew her.  
  
“Will she be okay?” she wanted to know and somehow felt like he'd know the answer. The man shrugged.  
  
“She will be whoever she was before she met me. Her rage will pass. But I don't think she's been okay. I don't think she will be. She's carrying the deaths of two species with her.”  
  
“One,” Rose replied automatically. “The Daleks survived.”  
  
The Time Lord's eyes widened for only a second, then he had his face under control again.  
  
“Even worse then.”  
  
“What have you to do with it?” Rose asked.   
  
He studied her for a few seconds.  
  
“Everything,” he then gave back calmly.  
  
Rose decided she liked him. She had liked the Doctor, despite knowing she had destroyed her whole planet and she could do the same for this man, because this man cared for the Doctor so clearly, it made her wonder how her friend couldn't see it.  
  
“I'm Rose.”  
  
The Time Lord looked at her in surprise. “The Master,” he replied, smirking over her incredulous expression.  
  
“It's not worse than Doctor, really.”  
  
She snorted. “It’s a lot worse than that, actually.”  
  
He shook his head. “It really isn't. But she never saw it, either.”  
  
With a shrug, he stepped into the corridor with the bedrooms. “I'll just take the same room as always,” he muttered, more to himself than to Rose.  
  
“Good night,” he called back to her.  
  
He had decided, he liked her. She seemed to care about the Doctor. And Rassilon knew, she would need her.  
  
  
  
  
“Oh, for God's sake, open up!” Penetrating drumming made the Master startle out of his nightmares. Reluctantly, he rolled out of bed and made his way to the TARDIS doors, only to realize, this kind of drumming was actually audible for the TARDIS'es other inhabitants, too.  
  
“What the hell?” The Doctor's sleepy voice grumbled behind him.  
  
“Doctorrrr!” they heard shrieking from the other side of the doors. Rose stumbled in behind them, face still drunk in sleep.  
  
“Oh God, I'm sorry, Doctor!” she assured them while Jackie kept on drumming against the door.  
  
“Open up! Open up, oh God, please open up!”  
  
The Master shot confused glances to the door, while the Doctor opened it with sleepy indifference.  
  
“Hello Jackie,” she yawned while the blond woman strode into the TARDIS without any word of all. “Please, come in, Jackie.”  
  
She shut the door, while the mother used the time to stem her hand into her hips and face her.  
  
“Have you got any idea what's going on out there?” she began. “And you are in here, letting me bang on that door until my hands fall off and... have you _slept_?”  
  
The Doctor stared at her, still a little bit sleepy, face not moving.  
  
“So sorry. Will never do again.”  
  
Jackie threw glances at her, and Rose was sure, had they been words, every respectable TV channel had blurred them out.  
  
“Out there, people are suffocating,” she finally explained with strained voice. “Some car service machines are poisoning the whole atmosphere! UNIT is already trying to settle things, but they don't know what to do!”  
  
“Some 'Car service machines'...” the Doctor muttered, which made the Master smother a laugh.  
  
Jackie looked like she wanted to kill her.  
  
The Doctor looked like she wanted to kill him.  
  
He quickly regained composure and got serious again.  
  
The Doctor turned back to Jackie. “How do you know what UNIT is up to?” she asked, finally sounding a lot more awake than before.  
  
The mother looked at her with piercing gaze. “Because they called _me_ to find out where _you_ are! Now madam, I hope you have a good reason for why they even know my family is tangled up with your lifestyle and...”  
  
“Okay, okay,” the Doctor retorted with a tired sigh. “Give me your phone, I'll give them a call.”  
  
Sourly looking, Jackie handed her her mobile.  
  
“It's okay, mom,” Rose promised while leading her to one of the TARDIS'es sofas. “We'll sort this out.”  
  
The Master could see Jackie didn't like the 'we' and everything it implied. He watched her without any interest, while listening to the call the Doctor was making. He had decided it was safer not to look at the Doctor to not enkindle her anger once again.  
  
“Brigadier..., yes, no, listen.. Yes, I heard, of course I... Five times? Oh. No, yes, of course you deserve your retirement, I wasn't.. Brigadier, would you please listen to me for a minu... You don't. Of course you don't.”  
  
The Doctor threw an exasperated glance towards the Master, then seemed to realize what she had just done and turned back quickly. The Master couldn't help but smile for a second, then hastily let the gesture die again.  
  
“No, Brigadier, I wasn't really around. Yeah, that's the trouble with time travelling, you see? I'm on my way. Enjoy your retirement. … I wasn't implying anything. No. No of course you deserve your.... Or for God's sake!”  
  
Without another word, she hung up.   
  
Smiling to Jackie and Rose, who were both watching her with the same look of disbelief, she handed Jackie back her phone.  
  
“An old friend,” she explained, just as the phone rang once again.  
  
With a sigh, she answered.  
  
“What else, Brigadier?” she asked, then smiled. The Master was almost relieved to see the gesture, the first genuine smile he had seen on this face yet. “Yes, I am indeed,” she grinned. “You should see what else I can turn into, a woman is nothing against that.”  
  
And with a quick movement, she set the TARDIS to appear in the UNIT HQ. “Talk to you after I saved the world!” she promised and hang up yet again. With a roll of her eyes, she handed Jackie back her phone, but her soft smile showed some deep affection.  
  
The Master knew this sentimental claptrap and he knew she needed her friends like air to breathe. Relieved, he let the TARDIS rattle him up, glad to have a few seconds his face was allowed to derail.  
  
When it was over and the Doctor had stepped to the door, she turned around to face them all once more.  
  
“You're coming, too,” she said.  
  
The Master nodded.   
  
Together, the four of them left the TARDIS. He could feel Jackie's curious glances stuck on him and hurried up to follow the Doctor.  
  
“Who is he, then?” Jackie asked her daughter. “She picked him up like she did with you? He's the new one?”  
  
“Eh... something like that,” Rose gave back, obviously unsure about how to react.  
  
The Master smiled silently for himself. Another stray dog picked up by the Doctor to see the universe. Worlds had collapsed, all his people had died, he's seen the end of the universe and now, after all of it, all the battles, all the hate, guilt and death, he's grown to like the idea.  
  
“He's a murderer.” The Doctor's voice echoed back from UNIT's stone corridor walls, coldly and cruel. “Nothing more. And he's with us to make sure he won't ever be one again. Not because I want him here.”  
  
The Master felt a piece of him die, slow, painful and gone forever.  
  
Jackie stared at him with opened mouth. Only shock stopped her from an outburst that would've gone from Rose's safety to the government’s way of dealing with criminals within ten seconds.  
  
But the second she had taken in air to get ready to speak, someone stepped in their way, a man with blond hair, a sloppy and relieved smile and a green UNIT uniform on.  
He saluted the Master. “Doctor!”  
  
Standing behind the real Doctor, the Master shook his head as fast as he could, but it was too late.  
  
Her voice was ice cold when she spoke.  
  
“That would be me.”  
  
“You?” the UNIT soldier replied in confusion. “But... he...”  
  
“Oh he,” the Doctor smiled her sweetest – and most faked – smile. “He is the Master. I'm sure you still have the Brigadier's records of _him_.”  
  
The poor soldier stared at her with widened eyes, then regained composure. “Please, come with us. We're in desperate need of your assistance.”  
  
The Doctor nodded.   
  
“It's what we're here for.”  
  
“What about him?” Jackie nodded towards the Master even after they walked. “Shouldn't you lot lock him up or something?”  
  
The UNIT soldier hesitated. “If the records are correct, it would be safer to keep him around the Doctor than locking him up away from her...”  
  
Behind the Doctor, unseen, the Master grinned.  
  
Back to the Master, unseen, the Doctor did as well.  
  
  


  
  
UNIT was lost, that much was clear the second the Doctor and her friends entered. The Master watched them a bit from the far, while they were telling her the whole story. Apparently, there wasn't a car in the country, the world even, which hadn't been equipped by a young genius’s discovery called “Atmos” - A fully automatic device which was now poisoning the atmosphere and threatened to smother the whole population of Earth to death. If the Master hadn't known any better, he would have assumed it to be his own plan. It was quite brilliant and effective.  
  
Too bad the Doctor was going to spoil it.  
  
  
  
  
“Sontarans!” she explained over the phone. Rose had her on speakers and the whole HQ of UNIT sat around the table, listening to the Doctor's explanations.  
  
“I've sorted it out, I think. The boy's dead, though. Sacrificed himself in the end.” Rose couldn't quite bring herself to care, thinking about the danger her family and friends had been in, but the Doctor sounded genuinely effected. “Atmosphere is still a bit pestered, but should be better, soon...”  
  
She coughed.  
  
“Are you outside right now?” Rose suddenly asked with a worried tone.  
  
The Doctor coughed again.  
  
“Thought it had cleared up by now,” she gave back evasive.  
  
The Master sighed heavily but remained silent.  
  
“I'm almost there, should only be...” she coughed again and her voice sounded hoarsely.  
  
Rose threw a worried glance to the Master, who frowned.  
  
More coughs, then sudden silence.  
  
“Doctor?” the Master asked, not able to keep quiet anymore. There was no answer and irritated, he gestured to Rose to ask.  
  
“Doctor?” she pleaded to the phone.  
  
Still no answer.  
  
Without any further waiting, the Master stormed out of the cellar that was UNIT's HQ, right into the poisoned atmosphere of this forsaken planet he hated so much.  
The Doctor lay not far from the entrance, on the ground, trying to crawl her way back to the safety of the thick doors. Hastily, the Master ran towards her, feeling the oxygen flee from his lungs with the activity. Quickly, he pulled her up, dragging her back with her, but she could barely walk straight anymore.  
  
“Doctor!” he urged her on hoarsely. “Just a bit, okay, you're nearly there.”  
  
She sacked inside his arms. With quick reflexes, he caught her and hurried to carry her back to the doors. He felt his head getting giddy and his view blurred in front of his eyes, as the oxygen got shorter and shorter from the efforts, even with his respiratory bypass kicked in. He stumbled to his knees, laid the Doctor down before him and lay his lips on hers, spending her his last breath. Right before he passed out, he heard calls from the other side of the doors.  
  
  
  
  
“It's not my fault he's an idiot, is it? They had gas masks!”  
  
“He saved your life.” That was Rose, wasn't it? It sounded like Rose. And somehow shaky, if he was being honest.  
  
“I didn't ask him to! And did I mention they had _gas masks_?”  
  
“I'm just saying,” Rose replied somehow annoyed.  
  
He really couldn't blame her. Discussing with the Doctor often ended in annoyance, as there was simply no right thing to say. Ever.  
  
He tried to open his eyes, but the light made his head ache and his throat felt like he had been chewing on sandpaper. It burned with every breath he took.  
  
Suddenly, he felt something soft and calming float through him, cleansing the roughness of his throat.  
  
“Oh,” he choked out with a hint of surprise. “I'm dying.”  
  
And before anyone could answer him, his world was exploding in light.

 

 


	4. All I need to know

 

_I don't know why, it's so hard to swallow our pride._   
_And I don't know how many wrongs make a right._   
_I don't know the reason._   
_Sometimes it just feels so, good to cry..._   
_And I don't know which way the wind will blow._   
_But you're here with me..._   
_And that's all I need to know.  
_

[ Thousand Foot Krutch - All I need to know ]

 

 

 

 

When he woke up again, he felt fine. Which was weird, because he just died, and the least he expected was some regeneration sickness, some confusion, dizziness, any of that, but in fact, he felt fine.  
  
Hesitantly, he opened his eyes.  
  
Next to him sat Rose, she looked worried but seemed to be okay with the change. He guessed she had already seen it happen with the Doctor, then.

He tried an encouraging smile.  
  
“How do I look, dear?”  
  
Oh, young voice. Lovely. He had missed being young.  
  
“Different,” she replied.  
  
Oh wow, she wasn't up for fun then.  
  
“Yes but... Good different? Or bad different? Don't say the Doctor's sixth regeneration different, that would be...”  
  
“I can hear you, you know?” he heard her call from the other side of the room and grinned.  
  
“Good different, I guess,” Rose sighed and held up a little pocket mirror. Fascinated, the Master looked at himself.  
  
He was young, oh, that was brilliant. He had short, brown hair, some brown, piercing eyes and a smile full of charming mischievousness. His nose was a bit tubby, but that was alright. It was something different from all his other selves, but he wasn't surprised, because he _felt_ different. He really had changed, hadn't he? Was it the Time War, was it the responsibility for what the Doctor had done, was it her pain, was it the long time he had spent as a human, or was it all of these things combined? Something seemed to have settled inside of him, something calm and sane, seemed to stop calling for taking over the universe and turn him into something else.  
  
But overall, the most gratifying change he felt, was that the drums were quieter than they had been in centuries.  
  
And this, he knew, he just knew, this was the Doctor's influence.  
  
With a wide smile, he jumped to his feet. They had brought him back to the TARDIS, he realized. The Doctor sat on a sofa, a book on her lap and her eyes seemingly focussed on it. There was something about this new body that made him braver. Maybe it was only the fact that it was a new one, that he was a body away from his own guilt and responsibility for Gallifrey's end. With swift steps, he went to the Doctor, sat down opposite of her and grabbed her book to pull it away.  
  
She didn't even flinch, just looked up to him with a grumpily expression. Grinning, he noted the way her eyes widened, only for one short second, when she saw his new face. The second the notion was safely suppressed again, she reached for her book.  
  
The Master put it behind his back in a swift move.  
  
“Tut tut!” he grinned. “What do you think, sunshine, how _do_ I look?”  
  
The Doctor studied him with a curious look and for a glorious minute, the Master thought he had finally broken through to her.  
  
“A little bit petty,” she finally said and got up to get another book from her shelf.  
  
“Don't be ridiculous,” he called after her, still sitting on his spot on the sofa. “I can't _look_ petty!”  
  
“Your nose is big.”  
  
The Master rolled himself off the sofa. “So?”  
  
“It's probably the biggest thing about you. You're awfully small this regeneration.”  
  
He looked down at himself. Damn, again?  
  
“So bad different, I take it?”  
  
A shame, he had thought he was rather handsome this time around. Still lacking a beard, but surely he could work on that?  
  
“And your hair is kind of... boring,” she said, while standing in front of her shelf, seemingly concentrated on choosing another book. With a roll of his eyes, he threw the one he had still in his hands next to her on the floor.  
  
“Who's petty now?” he asked tonelessly and made his way to the Doctor's dressing rooms.   
  
Time for a change of outfit.  
  
He had thrown half her robes around, had his legs buried underneath a pile of clothes and was just spreading a black, long coat in front of his face, when he heard the Doctor approach with almost hesitant steps behind him. He sighed and decided to make it easier for her.  
  
“Too many colours,” he said. “Can't you ever wear just simple black? I also think I somewhere found your sixth incarnation's coat, seriously, if you need any help burning it...”  
  
“I'll need time.”  
  
He let the coat drop and sighed, slowly turning around to her. She stood leaning on the door frame, looking at him with eyes that were soft for the first time since she's found him again.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I've forgiven you the most terrible things, again and again. Without even thinking. But this isn't something easy to forgive.”  
  
“I know,” the Master repeated, because he didn't know what else to say.  
  
“I don't know if I ever can,” she added quietly.  
  
The Master nodded. “I know. Just... tell me how to act? Please? Because I don't know. You said I could stay, but it doesn't feel like you want me here.”  
  
She shrugged. “Just leave me alone and it should be fine. I'm trying not to be rude again. Promised.”  
  
She winked at him and he decided he liked that little smile that came along with it, somehow familiar and friendly, even though he knew it most probably wasn't real. He nodded.  
  
The Doctor turned around to leave, but right before she stepped out into the corridor, she stopped and turned back to him.  
  
She nodded towards the coat. “I'm fairly sure it would look good on you.”  
  
“As much as I appreciate the peace offer,” he grunted, “it's too big for me.”  
  
She laughed while leaving and he kept the sound alive in his memory, unsure when he would get to hear it again, but happy that it was something he evoked, that he could still make her laugh.  
  
  
  
“So,” Rose asked, letting her legs dangle from the sofa while sipping on her tea. “Who is he?”  
  
The Doctor sighed. How was she going to explain her most complicated and treasured relationship to anyone, let alone Rose?  
  
She stared into her own tea for a few seconds, the cup held tight between her hands, then decided to just explain as good as she could.  
  
“We were friends, back when we were children,” she started, eyes still glued on her tea, watching them get mirrored in the liquid. “Best friends. Until we were more.”  
  
“So... you were a couple?”  
  
She looked up at Rose, then smiled. “You could call it that, I suppose. I always thought it was a shallow word for something as deep as our bond. We never talked about it. We never had to. We got together so naturally as we fell apart.”  
  
“What happened?” Rose held her breath, watching her over the rim of her own cup.  
  
The Doctor shrugged. “He got insane. I got scared.” She shook her head. “Sounds just as shallow.”  
  
“He doesn't seem that insane to me,” Rose threw in.  
  
Her answer was a snort. “I suppose not. War changes people, even him. I wouldn't trust him too much, though. Keep an eye open, will you?”  
  
Rose shrugged. “Sure. So...” She was clearly uncomfortable with asking, so the Doctor decided to make it easier for her.  
  
“I stole a TARDIS and ran away, he got banned from Gallifrey for other crimes. We both lived as renegades and he followed me around for a while. Tried his best to take over the universe and kill me. No matter who fell victim to his games, all he could see were his own goals, tunnel vision.”  
  
Rose listened, but seemed to have a lot of trouble with combining this new information and the man she had met a few days ago.  
  
“He... killed people?”  
  
The Doctor sighed. “You have no idea.”  
  
“But you still... I mean you still care for him?”  
  
The Doctor looked at her for a while, unsure how to answer the question honestly. “I... know it's wrong. I could never stop myself, though. As I could never stop myself from seeing the good in him, the potential. I have forgiven him every single time, my friend's deaths, stranger's deaths, even my own. But...”  
  
“Not Gallifrey,” Rose whispered.  
  
“I don't know how, Rose. I just don't know, I feel...”  
  
But she couldn't say it. This racing tornado on her inside, whirling and whirling with rage, betrayal, hurt, guilt and disappointment, there was no way she could ever put it into words, not the shallow ones she had found for a love greater than everything she's ever felt, not the powerful ones that were in her mind, in a language nobody spoke anymore.  
“I feel lost,” she said instead, because it was true. She felt lost and alone with a task and waves of contradictory feelings flooding her.  
  
“You're not lost,” her friend replied firmly. “I don't know what happened and I don't think I could ever realise the impact of it all, I know that, but you're not alone. You've got me and your TARDIS and a lot of people on Earth and other planets, who are your friends and grateful and admire you. A whole family, all over the universe.”  
  
“I killed my whole species,” the Doctor said, as if she hadn't even talked. “And despite it all, I love him. How can I even look at myself anymore...”  
  
“Doctor,” Rose interrupted her, carefully suppressing the worry in her brown eyes. She looked at her so with eyes so warm and full of love, the Doctor actually managed a shaky smile towards her and listened. “I know I can't forgive you. For what you did. I'm not the person who can. But you had a reason. You were trying to protect the universe. As you always are. And I'll always believe in you.”  
  
“Even with him?”  
  
Rose shrugged. “If you think he's worth a second chance, I believe you.”  
  
With a tiny, shaky smile, the Doctor got up and drew Rose into a tight embrace.  
  
“Rose Tyler,” she beamed and pressed a soft kiss on the girl's forehead. “Oh, what would I do without you?”  
  
“Probably still blow up innocent shopping centres! But what I actually wanted to talk about...”  
  
The Doctor looked at her curiously.  
  
“You remember your last body's nose, yeah? I was just wondering, because when you called his nose 'big'... AH!”  
  
With a laugh, the Doctor had started chasing her through the TARDIS.

 

 


	5. Daydreaming

_See I want more of something..._  
 _that I know is not real._  
 _Is this real life?_  
 _Why can't I decide..._  
 _I think I'll stay awhile._  
  
[ Leighton Meester - Daydreaming ]

 

 

 

Time was the only thing Time Lords were really good at. Sometimes even the Master wondered, in what other aspects their superiority was claimed. Intellect, he thought, wasn't something that came naturally to their race. More than others, that might be true, but still incredibly less when it came to important things, when it came to letting antiquated traditions go, when it came to how to be a good lead for the universe, and to how to pick their leaders (and maybe giving up on trying to control the Doctor's actions, because really, didn't they learn she'd never dance to their tune?)  
  
But time, he had to admit, they were good with. They usually were so utterly boring they never did anything with it, but if they did, they managed to do it right.  
  
He had come to the conclusion, that stealing bodies after his last regeneration, turning into a cheetah, being American and then disguise himself as a human for a few decades, might have gotten him out of practise in terms of handling time.  
  
It was the only explanation there was, because he was utterly and undeniable unable to give the Doctor the time she asked for.  
  
Though, if he was being honest, that was only half right. He was giving her time. Kept away from her for weeks, was the silent sidekick, had no other company than Rose to talk to.  
  
And it was slowly eating him up from the inside.  
  
Right now he was lying in bed, knowing there was only a wall separating him from her. If he was very quiet and held his breath for a while, he could hear her breathing. She wasn't sleeping calmly, she never was. She was murmuring words and empty phrases, was moaning and sometimes screaming in her sleep.  
  
It wasn't something new. It was the reason the room next to hers had always been empty, before she decided to dedicate him one, in the few, rare nights he spend in her TARDIS when hurt or lost. He once had been the only one she had trusted with her burdens, now he was no one.  
  
He hated nothing more than feeling like no one.  
  
And still he was here, holding his breath every few seconds while listening to hers. Still he was here, keeping in the background, never drawing much attention to him, so she would feel better. Still he was here and he was beginning to wonder why.  
  
Oh, he loved her, there was no doubt there. He had known the second he had seen the Doctor fall in Acardia, had dragged him out of the ruins of their fallen civilization, had known it to be always true and long denied, even after sending him to a life filled with guilt.  
  
But he was beginning to think it would be better and less hurtful for everyone involved if he simply left the next opportunity he got.  
  
“Do you listen to her breathing, too?” he asked into the dark room, to no one in particular. Maybe it was his imagination, but for a second it sounded as if the TARDIS was buzzing in understanding.  
  
Ridiculous, now he was talking to that old thing, too?  
  
He sighed.  
  
“Oh what's the use, really,” he told no one/The TARDIS/himself. “I barely recognize myself. I used to be...” He stopped.  
  
What did he use to be? A monster? Someone who blindly sent the man he loved on a mission to destroy his own planet? A murderer. A psychopath, people once said. He didn't like that term. He _felt_ things, he felt regret, he could, if he wanted to. He just never had found any reason to want to.  
  
“War changes people.” That was what Rassilon had said when he had brought him back, when he had asked him about the Doctor. Back then, he had been convinced that yes, war changes people, but the Doctor wasn't people. That conviction had faded more and more with every day he had watched his old friend walking into a fate he shouldn't be part of. Leading a battle for people who had nothing but always rejected him.  
  
He shook his head in the darkness. “I had to do something,” he whispered, hoping that at least her ship would understand. At least that old, dusty thing he had always hated and belittled would share his sorrow.  
  
He should leave, he should just leave. It was true, he was stuck with no where to go, but everything was better than lying here, in the dark, being no one, while waiting for a sign that the love of his life didn't hate him.  
  
He would give them both some peace.  
  
In that moment, he heard her mutter something, soft and incomprehensible. Once again, the Master held his breath, tried to listen to her. When she spoke again, he felt chills running all the way over his body. She was saying his name. Not his real one, not this one, but...  
  
“Koschei... Please...”  
  
He had gotten up before he could even think. Controlled by his instincts, he was out the door in a few steps. Only in front of hers, he shortly hesitated, but the imagined the TARDIS buzzing to him with hidden encouragement. He swallowed, then carefully pushed down the door handle.  
  
There was no light in the room but the crack the door had let in. He quickly shut it behind him, knowing he wouldn't have any problems with seeing in the dark. He smirked. Maybe there was still a little bit of Cheetah inside of him.  
  
As softly and quiet as he could, he sneaked to the bed where the Doctor was still fast asleep. Once or twice she murmured something, but he couldn't hear his name anymore. Again and again she turned around, fighting with her blanket, seemed restless and troubled even in her sleep.  
  
The Master knew there was no apology for what he was about to do but he also knew it wouldn't change anything. She couldn't forgive him, well, he would add it to the pile.  
And with a swift movement, he knelt in front of her bed and laid his hands carefully on her temples.  
  
  
  
  
Water, he noticed. Urgh, of all things, did it have to be water?  
  
She was falling. He saw her right beneath her, one arm reached out into nothingness, he saw panic in her eyes. Above, he heard laughter, gloating and cold. He shuddered, silently remembering this was a dream, this wasn't real, even if he knew this voice, even if he knew the feeling of drowning. Swiftly, he swam down to her and grabbed her hand, pulled her up.  
  
Her face flickered from confusion to relief while he dragged her out of the water. When they reached the surface, the laughing had died, no one was there. He looked around frantically, but there was no land in sight, nowhere to go.  
  
Behind him, the Doctor coughed, but instead of water, sand sputtered out of her throat. He watched it for a second in confusion, then realized he was standing on solid ground. Underneath them was Gallifrey's desert, in front of them Arcadia. He knew what would follow and decided that this was enough.  
  
He turned around and drew the Doctor into a tight embrace.  
  
“I'm here,” he promised, trying to give her as much protection as he could, while Arcadia exploded into thousand shattering pieces. “I'm here.”  
  
“I know,” her voice was hoarse from the sand.  
  
Suddenly, the picture faded, the noise was gone, replaced with the singing of birds and calmly swaying wind in the trees. In front of them lay the sea, behind them the civilization. The Master recognized this place; they had come here when they were children, when they had enough of their people and everything they expected from them. Had run away from all the responsibility they never asked for.   
  
“Better,” he said and she laughed.  
  
“Shush,” she said. “Don't make me question things. I don't want to wake up yet.”  
  
He laid down in the soft grass, head in his arms, looking up at the sky, grinning lazily up to her.  
  
“I don't want you to wake up either. So lay down, will you?”  
  
She smiled down at him for a few hesitant seconds, but then did as she was told, let her head rest on his chest like they did back then.

He swallowed down the lump in his throat and held her close.   
  
“Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
“No.”  
  
He raised an eyebrow at her, ignoring the fact that she couldn't see it.   
  
“Do you want to talk about the weather instead?”  
  
She smiled, only half visible, with her face buried in his chest. It looked utterly amused and childish and he hadn't thought it was possible for him to ever fall in love with a smile, but in this second he did.   
  
“It's very wet, with prospect of debris rain. Keep clear of the sandstorms. Tricky things, they are. At noon, it'll clear up though.”  
  
He shook his head, laughing.  
  
This was cheating, he knew it was. But he couldn't help it. He needed her like air to breathe and at the end of the day, this was better than destroying some planets, right?  
  
And so he asked.   
  
“Do you miss me? Is that why you dream of me?”  
  
“I always miss you,” she smiled. “But I only dream of you every third night.”  
  
He frowned. “What do you do the other two nights?”  
  
Her face darkened. “Something boring. Dying, alone, fighting, alone, destroying Gallifrey.... Alone. You know all the stuff I did on my own in reality already.”  
  
His chest was almost physically hurting now, as if his hearts were trying to beat their way out of it. He wondered if she could hear it or if it was too much realism for a dream.  
  
“You're never alone,” he promised. “You never have been. One word, and I'll be by your side, always.”  
  
It had always been true, even in their darkest days, in their cruellest battles. The Time War was something that had changed everything, was something he couldn't have let her go through on her own, whether she wanted or not, but before that, had there been anything, any call for help, he would've been there. Maybe reluctant, maybe gloating, maybe relieved, happy to still have some meaning to her, but he would have. And he wondered if she would realize that one day.  
  
Today seemed to be not that day. “It's peaceful here,” she said, brushing his words aside. “I haven't done peaceful in a while.”  
  
He softly let his hands wander through her hair. It was soft, almost silken and he wondered whether it was so in reality or whether it was something he only imagined.  
  
“You will,” he promised. “The pain won't last forever.”

She looked up at him, with eyes so lost they almost broke his hearts. “What if it will?”  
  
“Then I'll be here to bring you peace,” he promised.  
  
She didn't laugh at the irony, she didn't point out that all he's ever brought her was the exact opposite. She simply watched him for a few seconds, then smiled, resting her chin once more on his chest. They lay there the rest of the night, quietly by each other, in peace.   
  
Only when the Master realized it was time, he let the dream slowly slip away, giving him enough time to sneak out of the bedroom and return to his own bed.  
  
Every third night, he thought. He could manage that.

 

 


	6. Glow in the dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning because this awful writer killed off a child.

_If I could hold a mirror to your light so you could see,_  
_I’d do it in an instant, so you’d know just what you are to me._  
_They could take my sight, I’d find you with my eyes closed,_  
_I’m not lost as long as you glow in the dark._  


[ Rachel Rose Mitchell - Glow in the dark ]

 

 

 

He hadn't exactly expected to find much sleep that night, but he hadn't expected the Doctor to jump out of bed the second she woke up, ready to take on the universe, either.  
With absolute horror he watched her jump up and down the console room, dancing around the switches and letting the TARDIS shake them up, completely oblivious to his sleep deprived face. Rose seemed to be fit and ready to see what the Doctor had in store for them, a wide grin on her face, while watching the Doctor being more happy and excited than she had been in weeks.  
  
The Master threw her a meaningful glance. Rose frowned and he rolled his eyes, gesturing towards the Doctor. The blonde, in answer, rolled her eyes as well.  
  
“Ehm... Where are we?” she asked innocently.  
  
“No clue,” the Doctor answered with a grin. “Let's go out and find out, what do you think?”  
  
And with a wink, she ran to the door and opened it – Only to almost fall down into nothing.  
  
With a quick movement, the Master grabbed her by her coat and drew her back into the safety of the TARDIS. The Doctor seemed a bit pale, but kept up a shaky smile.  
  
“Right, okay, maybe not the best parking spot I ever chose,” she remarked and gave Rose a brilliant smile, as if she was the one who had just saved her life.

The Master rolled his eyes and stepped back from her, looking outside through the still open doors. They were standing right on a huge abysses edge, staring down to a fall that looked like it could go on forever. He shook his head quietly.  
  
That was exactly where the Doctor's constant craving for adventure would get her some day. If she only checked on her controls to see if she's landed safely. It wasn't like he was a control freak. It was just the _sensible_ thing to do. Controlling, that was what controls were there for, after all.  
  
Suddenly tense, the Doctor went back to the controls to steer the TARDIS to a safer spot. The Master watched her with a tight throat, unsure what to make of the situation. He wasn't used to saving the Doctor's life this much, usually he had been the one trying to take it. This was something else, something more honest. For once in his life, he was acting openly, no masks, no disguises, no hidden intents. With shock the Master began to realize that he was _vulnerable_. Not only that, but he was vulnerable while getting rejected, again, again and again.  
  
Rose threw an apologetic glance towards him. With a snort, he turned his back on her. If there's one thing he really hated, it was _pity_.  
  
It just showed that others had realized he was being vulnerable as well.  
  
“There we go,” the Doctor finally broke the uncomfortable silence that had settled around them. “Should be safer now.”  
  
The Master noticed that she still hadn't checked her screens and sighed. From the short glance laid on him, he was fairly sure she knew about his inner struggle, but chose to ignore it. With a bright grin, she pushed open her TARDIS doors once more.  
  
They had landed only a few feet away from the abyss, but this time they seemed to stand safe. With a smile, Rose followed the Doctor outside and shrugging, the Master joined them a bit behind.  
  
It wasn't just the abyss that had been dark, he realized after a few frowning glances. The whole area was dived into a blackness that seemed to come from everywhere. There was soft, green grass underneath their feet, which somehow seemed to glow, lighted up their way despite the gloomy atmosphere.  
  
When he looked up at where other planets had their sky, he could see nothing but fog and darkness, seemingly endless like the pit the Doctor almost fell into.  
  
“It's... beautiful,” Rose whispered and the sound seemed to almost get swallowed by the surrounding darkness.  
  
The Master frowned.  
  
Beautiful? A whole world wrapped up in constant darkness, and nothing to see, no matter which direction he was looking, but shiny, crunching _grass_?  
  
The Doctor smiled, her widened eyes seemed to never stand still while she turned into every direction, utterly fascinated by what she saw.  
  
“Yes, it is, isn't it?”  
  
Sometimes he had to wonder if there was something broken inside of him, something with which others saw beauty, saw life, saw anything, really.  
  
He had once lived to destroy what others called beautiful, he had once followed his own goals with no regard for anything or anyone others risked their life for. And now, here he stood, on this stinking planet he didn't even know the name of, and the only beauty he saw was _her_. All his life, all he had ever seen was her.  
  
On the other hand, he thought while slowly following the two women in front of him. on the other hand, maybe he wasn't broken at all. When he met the Doctor, he had still been a child, fallen in love the second he had laid eyes on her, so how on Earth was he supposed to see anything else after that?  
  
Rose could barely hide her enthusiasm.  
  
“So, where are we?”  
  
“No clue,” the Doctor gave back cheerily.  
  
When Rose threw a glance at the Master, he only shrugged. He hadn't heard of any place like this before and he could understand why.  
  
“So... do you think someone lives here?”  
  
“Could be,” the Doctor grinned. “Let's find out, shall we?” And she offered Rose her arm, which the blonde took gladly.  
  
Together they walked off, dragging a reluctant Master behind them.  
  
While looking around, he thought of warm sunlight, soft wind in the trees and the Doctor's smile when he asked her if she missed him.  
  
It was then they came to a sudden halt.  
  
The Master stared. In front of them, standing on the tall, glowing grass, stood a creature. Fascinated he stepped closer, until he stood right next to Rose, watching it intently.  
  
The Doctor beamed.  
  
He couldn't recognize much in the bad light. It seemed to have an utterly humanoid face, but on its forehead stuck out a antenna with a light at the end, like frog-fishes had.  
  
“Hello!” the Doctor greeted it with a friendly smile. “I'm the Doctor, this is Rose! What's your name?”  
  
It stared at them in utter confusion, the red eyes wide open. Seemingly scared, it took a step back.  
  
“It's okay,” the Doctor tried to calm it down. “We're friendly. Just passing through, you see?”  
  
The Master rolled his eyes.  
  
“I think it's a child.”  
  
Well, to give her some credit, the Doctor only hesitated for a second, then nodded. “Think you're right,” she replied. “But where are their parents?”  
  
Annoyed, the Master sighed. It was going to be one of these days, wasn't it? Bringing a lost child back to its parents, being the hero of small town problems?  
  
The Doctor had turned around to him, grinning. “Oh, you bet.”  
  
Well, wasn't that just typical?  
  
His stupid hearts were fluttering in.... annoyance.  
  
She kneeled down to the small creature in front of them, her sweetest smile on her lips.  
  
“Now, where are your parents, little one? Have you lost them?”  
  
A nod was her answer, so hesitantly and shy, the Master almost missed it.  
  
The Doctor didn't, oh of course she didn't, this was what she shined at, wasn't it?  
  
“Don't worry,” she promised. “We'll help you find them.”  
  
To her surprise, the child backed away from her when hearing this. The Master noticed tears in its eyes, right before it turned around and started running.  
  
“Hey!” the Doctor called after it in confusion. “You don't need to run from us, we can help you, I promise! It's what we do!”  
  
With shaking knees, the kid came to a halt only a few steps away from them. The Master frowned, slowly recognizing the behaviour.  
  
“H... how?” the child asked.  
  
The Doctor and Rose exchanged a look, right before the Time Lady stepped closer, so slowly as if she was nearing a wild animal.  
  
Behind them, they suddenly heard excited voices calling through the darkness. With efforts, the Master could see two points of light dance through the air from the far.  
  
“S'parks! G'litter! Where are you two? S'parks!”  
  
“Well, this would be a start,” the Doctor beamed. “Are these your parents looking for you?”  
  
The child looked frantic, desperate even, like a rabbit trapped by a fox.  
  
“Doctor,” the Master started reluctantly. “I think...”  
  
But it was too late already. The parents had been alerted by their voices and the tiny light point of their child and came closer.  
  
“S'parks!” a rough voice said and suddenly there were larger creatures of the same kind, hugging the child with all they had.  
  
The woman let go of it first, the Master could see her tear strained face turning, obviously looking for someone. “But... where's G'litter?”  
  
The Doctor's grin finally dropped.  
  
The child now sobbed uncontrollably, her whole body was tense and shook in fear. It wasn't that the Master _cared_ per se; it was just that he knew the symptoms of guilt and these were it.  
  
He looked to Rose, who was all doe-eyed in worry for the child, looked to the parents, who were now frantically looking for their daughter, looked to the Doctor, who was slowly realizing something bad was happening and rolled his eyes.  
  
“Get clean,” he told the kid. “You're going to have to either way and the sooner you get out with it, the sooner we can start fixing it.”  
  
It stared at him and with an especially loud sob, finally nodded. The parents seemed utterly incredulous while listening to what it had to say.  
  
“We... we were playing at the cliff. I... I know we sh... shouldn't play there, but I thought I could keep her s...safe.” The child could barely bring out the words from all the shaking. “There was something... we didn't know what it was. It just appeared in front of us, it was... it was blue and...”  
  
Without anyone noticing, he threw a glance to the Doctor, who by now seemed to have figured out what was going on. She stared at the family in shock.  
  
“She... she wanted to see... closer... and she ran towards it and then it just... she... she fell down.”  
  
And the kid broke once again out into crying, right in front of her frozen parents.  
  
“I wasn't fast enough to catch her, I just... heard her scream,” she cried. “I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry mom, I know I should have taken care of her, I'm so sorry, so sorry...”  
No one seemed to know how to act. The parents were slowly recovering from their shock, only to join into their child's crying, the Doctor still stood utterly frozen, unable to say a word and Rose cried silently beside them all.  
  
Emotions, the Master thought with a snort. That's their true face. Made you freeze when someone needed you, made you lose your head.  
  
“You've lost a child tonight,” he brought out soberly. He was expecting looks of disapproval the second he opened his mouth, but the Doctor was still utterly paralyzed. Fine, he thought. I'll go on then. “It's horrible, I'm sure, but you might want to tell your daughter you forgive her, unless you want to lose your second child, too.”  
  
He knew loss, despite what everything said, he had come to know it in very young years. He knew the urge of tearing up a whole world just to never feel any second of it again. He knew the resulting hopelessness, the rage, the self-hate, he knew what it was like to stalk one person across the whole universe because it was the only thing that kept him sane.  
  
It wasn't that he couldn't understand what was going on in the poor parent's heart, he did. He just had decided one day that he didn't care. If the universe asked him, it could suffer loss, heartbreak and devastating sadness every day of its fucking existence, all across it, as much as possible. No one had cared when he had, no miracle had happened, no loved one had caught him when he had fallen deeper than ever before, no Doctor had been there to pick up the pieces.  
  
The Doctor had grown to grant a mercy to others she himself had never received. He had grown to do the exact opposite.  
  
But he knew guilt as well, and he knew it as something self-inflicted. And right now, he needed to know fault could be forgiven.  
  
The parents stared at him with unconcealed anger, tears still shining in their eyes. Then they drew their daughter into their arms, shielding her from the strangers they had met, the strangers that had taken their youngest child from them, and made their way back into the darkness. They could hear them cry even after they've been swallowed by the blackness, completely out of sight.

The Master sighed.  
  
“Doctor,” he heard Rose whisper beside him. “Doctor, are you...?”  
  
Without any word, the Doctor walked away from them, back into the TARDIS, her face still completely blank from shock.  
  
Rose looked after her with so much worry, it drove new tears into her eyes, while the Master slowly came to realize, that maybe, just maybe, for her, he'd even care for loss.  
“Get in there,” he told her. “Tell her it's not her fault.”  
  
“She won't believe me,” Rose replied unhappily.  
  
“No,” he agreed. “She won't. But she needs to know someone believes it.” When looking into her confused face, he explained further. “That's who she is. She's living for what others see in her, because it's the only thing that keeps her upright. She can't stand to look at herself, she's done too much.” He sighed. “She needs to know she's forgiven by you, because she will never forgive herself.”  
  
Rose stared at him with widened eyes, then nodded. Before she had taken more than three steps, the Master called after her, “When she says she should've just checked the damn controls, just tell her that now, she will remember to next time.”  
  
Rose nodded and walked on. He wasn't far behind her, following her with slow steps. Before she went inside, she turned around to him once more.

“Why aren't you telling her yourself?” she wanted to know.  
  
The Master smiled sadly. “I'm the last person she wants to talk to right now, believe me."  
  
She didn't believe him, but it didn't matter, did it? Because _he_ believed it and nothing she could say would change that. The Doctor had to convince him herself, one day.  
  
She found her in front of her controls, staring blankly into nothing. She didn't look up when Rose entered.  
  
The girl stepped around the console and grabbed her friend's hand, squeezing it tightly. “It wasn't your fault, Doctor.”  
  
“Yes it was,” came the quiet answer, thin and hoarsely. It felt wrong. Her Doctor, with a voice as loud as music, words so strong they could enkindle hope like fire.  
  
“They were playing at a cliff,” Rose countered. “It could've happened.. anytime. You were just _there_.”  
  
“They were playing at a cliff and a blue box appeared out of nothing right in front of their eyes. Of course they'd come looking. I should've just checked the damn controls!”  
  
Rose hesitated. She had two choices here and for a second she wondered if the Doctor knew how much this man outside of the TARDIS cared for her, how well he knew her. She shouldn't be the one telling her all these things and she knew she shouldn't. They might help, just as he said, but she was sure they'd help more if he said them.  
  
She sighed.  
  
“You will remember to next time,” she recited. “You'll learn from this. You'll make it your responsibility even though it isn't and change because of it. That's because you're a good person.” She tried an encouraging smile.  
  
The Doctor tried to give her a shaky, reassuring smile back but failed miserably.  
  
Still, she seemed a little bit better, even though Rose was sure, she was just doing this thing where she sucked all her sadness in and acted like she was alright. Always masking herself, because she just couldn't stop worrying about everyone else more than herself.  
  
She winked at Rose.  
  
“Tell him thank you.”  
  
Rose was only stunned for the fraction of a second, then she smiled. Of course she would. Of course she would already know all the things she was trying to tell her. Of course she would know him like he knew her.


	7. Through the Ghost

_All the perfect moments are wrong,_   
_All the precious pieces are gone._   
_Everything that mattered is just..._   
_A city of dust..._   
_Covering both of us._

[ Shinedown - Through the Ghost ]

 

 

 

Life on the TARDIS was stuck. The few next days, he felt like the Doctor lost herself. She hadn't spoken much with him in general, but now he was growing endlessly bored, because she wouldn't speak at all, constantly staring at him or Rose without even really seeing them, without hearing a word they said. It was like she had gone to some place far away, and none of them had been able to come with her.  
  
He couldn't help but wonder if this was what it had been like after she destroyed Gallifrey. Had she sat all day in her ship, desperate to be alive, drowning in guilt, crashed by the thought of all the souls she had ended?  
  
He had always found something strangely appealing on deciding over another person's death or life. It wasn't the thrill of the kill that had turned him into what he was today, but the feeling of being a God whenever he took someone's life, whenever he held this much power over them. Today, lying on the TARDIS sofa, a book in his lap from which he couldn't even remember the title, for the first time in a very, very long time, he regretted ever having had that power.  
  
He just wanted her to be the Doctor again, his silly happy idiot, all sappy and infuriating moral, and funny, actually fucking hilarious, while being unbearable arrogant and talking faster than she could think, than _anyone_ could think. **  
  
**He just wanted her to be happy again.  
  
“Do you want me to read you a book?“ he asked that night, sat next to her while she stared at the ceiling above her bed. On other days he would've avoided being so close to her, but he doubted she was even aware he was here.  
  
“It's about...“ he stared at the title, hesitating for a second, then sighing. “Actually, I have no idea what it's about.“  
  
He threw her a thin smile, but he just as well could've thrown it into the bin.  
  
He sighed. “Do you want to talk about it?“  
  
She didn't.   
  
Well, he had known that before, but it was a first, it was an option so inprobable, he just couldn't actually consider it – The Doctor _always_ wanted to talk. On good days, she didn't even stop for breath.  
  
She didn't talk today. **  
  
**Guess, that made it an awful day for both of them.  
  
“Do you want me to leave?“ he asked, not, because he actually wanted to leave her, but because he was running out of options, out of ideas to provoke any kind of reaction.   
  
Could he leave her alone now, if she told him, yes, yes please leave, it'll help me?  
  
Maybe.  
  
He wasn't a selfless kind of person – ever - . but right now, at this very moment, he was desperate enough to give himself up so she would smile again.  
  
Damn, and he called _her_ the sappy one.  
  
To his surprise he suddenly felt soft fingers intertwining with his. With a puzzled expression he looked down at their hands, while some stupid mechanism of his body kicked in and made his hearts beat faster. 

“Well,” he said, stroking her hand softly with his thumb. “I wasn't going to anyway.”  
  
He had felt this sudden and unbearable urge to protect her the last time when they had been children, running through Gallifreyan fields, breaking every single rule the Time Lords could ever think of. Back in these days, he would've done everything, to keep his young friend safe. He would've let the stars burn out, would've let the sky turn dark, let time tear apart and the universe crash and burn, had it just protected the one he loved.  
  
Funny, he thought he'd never feel this way ever again. Love, yes, burning rage, jealousy, pain, betrayal, all of these emotions which had marked their time together, stained it in grotesk colours, but the need to protect had yielded to something different, something darker, something deadly.  
  
He had screwed up, hadn't he? All these centuries he had blamed her for what had happened, when in reality, oh Rassilon, he had screwed them up.

 

 **  
** **“** How could this happen to us?“ she asked this night, when he had sneaked in her dreams once again.   
  
Distantly, he wondered if he should feel bad. She wouldn`t approve of him doing this, but she wouldn't approve of most of the things he did and thought. Usually, he had her horror to measure how far he had gone. Right now, all he had was a cold shoulder no matter how well or horrible he behaved.  
  
With a sigh, he drew the Doctor's dream version towards himself, held her in his arms as softly as he managed without crushing her.  
  
“I don't know,“ he answered quietly, truthfully, because he truly didn't.   
  
At some point he couldn't even remember anymore, everything had gone wrong and they've gone apart and into so many different directions, he couldn't even see the Doctor from his path anymore.  
  
“I love you,” she whispred and the words almost got lost in the wind which didn't really exist.  
  
He hadn't known that either.  
  
“Are you sure?” he wanted to know. “Running around the universe with anyone but me. Thinking about everyone but me. Caring about everything but me. Doesn't look like love to me.”  
  
He hadn't intended to sound this bitter, had more aimed for something casual. Dreams were never made for lying, not even the Doctor's, it seemed.  
  
“And how would you know what love looks like?”  
  
She didn't mean to insult him, she simply sounded sad.  
  
Her not intenting it to hurt, made it hurt worse.  
  
“Don't,” he demanded. “Don't go there. I love you, I have loved you every second I'm alive, every hurting, fucking breath I take. I centered my life around you, how dare you doubting this?”  
  
She shook her head, smiling sadly.  
  
“You spent the last few centuries trying to figure out the most inventive ways to hurt and destroy me and everything I love. This isn't love, Koschei.”  
  
That stung. He flinched at the name, felt something in his hearts aching at the sound of it. Meanwhile the dream's wind got colder as the suns slowly lost their light.  
  
“I spent the last few centuries trying to figure a way to make you hurt as much as you hurt me,” he shot back sharply. “While you ran around with a new girl every week. You think _this_ is love?”  
  
“So I'm not allowed to have friends?” she snorted. “Because you have none?”  
  
“Nobody ever compared,” he muttered. “Nobody ever... managed to make me care. All I ever cared... Everyone I've ever seen, was you. I couldn't bare ever being with someone else, even considering to do anything with them I should`ve done with _you_... it's more than I can bear.”  
  
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Maybe we just love differently,” she explained.  
  
“Still not convinced you love me at all.”  
  
The Doctor sighed.  
  
“You think I don't feel the hole?” she asked. “Well, I do. Of _course_ I do. But you're so far gone and whatever I do or say or try, you`re making it clear you're not coming back, creating chaos everywhere you go. So I fill it up, so I make friends, because I can`t bear it, I can't bear being alone and thinking about everything I lost, again, again and again. That doesn't diminish my love for you.”  
  
“So that's it?” the Master asked, genuinely curious now. He had never known any other love than the one he felt for the Doctor, all devouring, consuming and raging wild, so how could he have ever known there were other ways to love? “You try to fill the hole and I try to make you hurt as much as I do?”  
  
“Well,” the Doctor noted with a shrug, gaze wide empty into the darkness the two suns had left for them. “You sure as hell found a way.”  
  
The Master flinched.  
  
“Yeah... About that.”  
  
“Don't.”  
  
He took a deep breath.  
  
“Will you ever forgive me, Theta?”  
  
“I won't tell you again. Don't.”  
  
“Because I think... I might need you to. I don't know how to go on, I...”  
  
“I love you,” she repeated. “Don't you think I have forgiven you long since?”  
  
He felt tears in his eyes, how could there be tears in eyes that weren't even his, in a mind scape that was nothing but the reflection of her thoughts come to pictures?  
  
“No. I don't think you have.”  
  
When she turned her face back to him, he could see her tears just as well.  
  
“Why did you do it?” she asked. “I promised myself to never ask because I knew, I knew every little thing you did, you did to hurt me, but this, this... How could you do this to me?”  
  
With horror, he could hear her voice break into a sob. He wanted to reassure her, wanted to take her back into his arms, wanted to smother the tears, but he could feel her dream slip away like everything about her had always slipped away from him.   
  
With tears in his eyes he snapped out of it, drew back from her mind and her bedroom.  
  
This night, he curled up into his sheets, silently sobbing on his own, torn apart over someone else's hurt and the helpless desperation it had started to bring upon him.

 


	8. House of Memories

_If you're a lover, you should know_   
_The lonely moments just get lonelier_   
_The longer you're in love._

_I don't want to be afraid,_   
_The deeper that I go_   
_It takes my breath away._

[Panic at the Disco - House of Memories]

 

 

His whole face felt heavy from crying when he woke up. He wasn't familiar with the feeling and spent half an hour in front of a mirror, trying to figure out if his face had changed and why his eyes felt like he had just been awake for the third night in a row.  
  
This wasn't who he used to be, he realised. He rarely ever cried- but if he did, he cried for himself, not anyone else. Let alone the Doctor.  
  
He had changed. Or maybe, even worse, he hadn't. Maybe he was finally, after all these centuries, exactly the person he used to be.  
  
The person madly in love with someone too good for him.  
  
He splashed some cold water on his face, then stepped out into the TARDIS.  
  
Rose was up already, sipping on a cup of coffee. He couldn't help but feel relief wash over him when he saw the Doctor sitting next to her, staring into a teacup and looking incredibly tired, but at the same time, more awake than she had for the last few days.  
  
It was then he realised something, feeling it heavy in his chest, like stones lying on his hearts; something that both scared and amazed him.  
  
A part of him seemed to settle in; a long gone, missed, adult part of him that he had forgotten had existed and never noticed how much it was needed.  
  
He knew what to do now.

  
The Master stepped up, took the Doctor's hand and pulled her softly with him, out of the bright kitchen and into his bedroom, away from Rose's curious ears.  
  
“You're feeling better?” he asked.  
  
She nodded and slowly – hesitantly, he realised – drew her hand out of his grip.  
  
“Yeah, I'm alright.”  
  
“Good,” he replied, even though he knew she lied – if she had enough energy to try and lie to him, it meant she was recovering, even though she might not realise it yet. “I'm going to leave.”  
  
“If you hope for me to tell you not t-”  
  
“No,” he interrupted her quickly. “No, listen to me, please, for one minute. Hear me out.”  
  
She looked somehow bitter, but nodded.  
  
“You changed me,” he explained. With a slight smile towards the ceiling, he added. “Well, twice actually. All that I have become, the monster I am... I became because I changed, and you changed me.”  
  
Her face went pale and he could see she was about to argue, but he quickly reassured her. “But... I've changed. Again. And I... I don't want to hurt you any more.”  
  
She just stared at him, completely lost for words.  
  
He smirked.  
  
“I know you can't believe me. That's why I'm leaving- I know, as long as I'm here, you won't be... better.”  
  
He had expected this to be easy. He had expected it to be okay because it was the right thing and he was going to do this, for her, now. The right thing.  
  
But he felt his voice break and he felt tears in his eyes. With a hurried movement, he drew her into his arms and pressed a kiss to her forehead.  
  
“I'm sorry, Theta. I know, you can't forgive me, but I'm so sorry.”  
  
He didn't see her flinch at the name, because he had already turned around to leave.

  
  
It hurt. It hurt more than he had expected or could've seen coming.  
  
He knew what it was like to be left. He knew what it was like to feel unwanted, lonely and abandoned. He knew the pain of it, the rage it caused, he knew the sleepless nights and the tears that came until they came no more.  
  
He had lived through every single second of it, had been lying awake with it night after night.  
  
Never in his wildest dreams had he expected it to be worse to be the one leaving.  
  
And yet, somehow this feeling disarmed all the other pain he had known. This feeling that she might think she wasn't enough for him.  
  
With a lump in his throat he stood on one of the nastier streets of London, feeling both lost and deserted. He didn't intend to stay on Earth, naturally. In fact, he had a plan and for the first time in a very long time, for the first time since he had worn this name, it wasn't a plan that would harm anyone else. He took a deep breath, threw one last, lingering look to the TARDIS and her blue, worn-out exterior, almost managed a smile and then got started.  
  
He had very early learned how to drown his emotions in schemes and work.  
  
He had very late learned that emotions were nothing to be ignored.  
  
  
  
This time, however, he had been working for them and not against them, and it was interesting how they led him to new determination and aims. His original plan had been to break into UNIT's archives and find something that would help him to leave this hell hole of a planet, but soon he found out about another organisation, one that actually got into the _real_ alien stuff instead of just calling the Doctor whenever they were in trouble.  
  
When he finally met the head of Torchwood- seemingly coincidentally, because how was he to know the Master was a proficient stalker - he had his most charming smile on and got a dazzlingly bright one back. He also had a Vortex Manipulator on his wrist which appeared to the Master to be the most beautiful thing he had seen in quite some while.  
  
This would be child's play.

  
“Captain Jack Harkness!” the man unnecessarily introduced himself. (Also, the Master had done his research and it turned out, the Captain title was a fake. Who would feel the need to choose such a conceited title for themselves? Really.)  
  
“Harold Saxon.” He didn't particularly like the name, but what did it matter for now? It wasn't like he was going to be Prime Minister with it, or something else that would engrave it into Earth's history. “Very nice to meet you.”  
  
Jack grinned and his unnaturally white teeth almost blinded him. “That's usually my line.”  
  
The Master put on his brightest, most artificial smile. “Well, I can't let you do all the work now, can I?”

  
Jack seemed to have, like he suspected, quite the ego. He bought the Master a drink, gave him a few other brilliant smiles together with a lot of sweet talk and leaned in to kiss him before he had even finished the drink he never asked for.  
  
The Master smiled, feeling the corners of his mouth freezing uncomfortably, and recoiled to escape the threat of a kiss.  
  
“How about we take this somewhere more quiet?” he asked smoothly.  
  
The frozen smile began to eat away his soul, but Jack didn't seem to notice. With a huge grin on his face, he nodded and led him out of the smoky bar to an abandoned back street. He took a deep breath to suck in the fresh night air and felt the almost painful fake smile fade. This was good; this was his area, here he felt comfortable and safe.  
With a more charming, _real_ smile, the sort of smile he showed when a plan was working out just fine (so, not that often), he turned back to Jack.  
  
The Captain once more advanced to kiss him. This time, the Master didn't flinch back until their lips were almost touching. In a swift move, he laid his hand on Jack's neck, pressed the sleeping patch on his skin and winked charmingly while he sacked to the ground.  
  
“I have rules,” he murmured while bending down to steal Jack's Vortex Manipulator. “No kissing before I betray you. Or ever, if your name is Jack Harkness.”  
  
And with his newest trophy, he stepped over the motionless body and into the night, whistling a little tune that told of two suns, red grasses and a boy that loved the stars more than he ever loved him.

The rest was the easy part.  
  
Other Time Lords would have said now began the tricky road, the plan that could bring time out of balance, that could tear holes into reality.  
  
But he wasn't another Time Lord, he was the Master and he knew what he was doing.  
  
Since he _always_ checked the monitors, it was easy to return to the scene of the crime, a few hours before the TARDIS had arrived. With an almost bored yawn, he placed himself into the glowing grasses, staring into the all-surrounding darkness ahead of him with the cliff at his back, the view towards the spot he knew the TARDIS would land on. The darkness was too dense to actually get used to it, but after a few hours of staring into blank nothingness, (and despite what Rose said, glowing grass was neither interesting, nor beautiful,) he saw little dots of lights jumping up and down in the distance.

  
That must be the children, playing where they weren't allowed to.  
  
He kept his eyes on them. He only had one chance to fix this and he really wasn't planning on tearing the universe apart. At least not today.  
  
And there was nothing better to do in this darkness, anyway.  
  
After a little more waiting, they were close enough for the Master to hear bits of their conversation.  
  
“We're not supposed to play this close to the great cliff,” the elder sibling said. The Master recognized her voice, he remembered how it had sounded when it was full of grief and guilt.  
  
He heard the TARDIS sounds behind him, for the first time and he heard the two sisters whisper to each other nervously, discussing what was going on. Before they had settled their argument of whether they should get closer or not, the TARDIS dematerialised again. He heard the girl call “G'litter!” and watched the girl, his whole body tense and ready to jump into action. He just had to wait, so the sister's attention would be distracted from the girl for one second...  
  
And there it was, the sound of the TARDIS, a second time. The Master used the one second the older sister was averting her eyes to look at the arriving ship, jumped to G'litter and dragged her away from the cliff.

  
She let out a scream- which was fine, he assumed, it shouldn't mess up the timelines- but just to be cautious he held a hand to her mouth anyway while he dragged her out of her sister's sight.  
  
“It's okay,” he whispered, after realizing he just came across as a kidnapper (which wasn't rare, but was for _once_ not the case). “It's okay, you're safe.”   
  
She didn't seem to believe him; at least that's what he took from her biting into his hand. With a curse far too nasty for her young ears, he quickly switched hands and pressed her head against his chest to prevent her from biting again.  
  
“I'm saving your life, you ungrateful brat,” he hissed into her ear, and finally felt her relax in his grip.  
  
“What's a 'brat'?” she asked curiously and he sighed, exasperated.

This _really_ took away the fun in insulting someone.  
  
“Someone who isn't allowed to play at the cliff and does it anyway,” he growled, which made her squirm uncomfortably, but at least she now realized she wasn't in serious danger.  
  
“I just wanted to look where the sound came from,” G'litter whined, and he rolled his eyes, turning her around.

They could see the TARDIS from here; he even thought he could see the Doctor, Rose and him stamping through the grass, though it might have just been his imagination.  
  
“It's a ship,” he explained grudgingly. “A... ehm... Police ship. They're checking if everything's in order, so if they find out you played on the cliffs with your sister, you'll get in trouble, you see? That's why we'll wait here, until they're gone.”  
  
Ridiculous. He had made up quite a few ridiculous lies in his life, but this one made even _him_ cringe. But the girl bought it and sat down in the glowing grasses, a serious, wide-eyed look on her face. The Master sat down beside her, fighting a smirk.  
  
If only the Doctor listened to his reasoning like that.

It was weird. He had only been gone a few weeks, but he already missed her. When he thought about how he had been away for years sometimes, trying to think of the perfect scheme, it seemed he'd grown even weaker than he was before the war.  
  
But he couldn't help it. Her smile had done something to him, turned him upside down; her sadness had broken his hearts and his guilt had begun to change him into someone who would never, ever fail her again.  
  
He wondered if this was selflessness, because if it was, he would have to have a talk with her, tell her that her so-often praised selflessness was nothing but hypocrisy, nothing but wishing for the pain and guilt to end; that there was no selflessness, because even seeing someone else happy had a purpose for yourself.  
  
But he had a feeling she wouldn't listen.

  
They sat in absolute silence until the TARDIS dematerialized one last time. The girl had almost held her breath in order to stay out of trouble and he was busy with his own unwelcome thoughts. Well, kids weren't that bad, he thought while slowly getting up. If they shut up, that was.  
  
“There you go,” he grumbled and gave the girl a pat on her back. “Go to your family, tell them you're fine and never mention me again.”  
  
And with that, he vanished into the darkness. While typing coordinates into his vortex manipulator, he could hear them cry in the background and decided to stay just a little bit longer, out of selfish selflessness. He watched the family reunite until the darkness swallowed them on their way home, watched them hug and cry in joy, watched the parents hold their child like they'd never seen anything more precious than her, like she'd been gone for years- and with a painful stab in his hearts, he wondered if anyone would ever hold him like that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one goes out to everyone who thought I'd kill an innocent little child off, lol.


	9. Spirits

 

_I've been looking at the stars tonight._   
_And I think oh, how I miss that bright sun._

_I've got guns in my head and they won't go._   
_Spirits in my head and they won't go._

[ The Strumbellas - Spirits ]

 

  
  
  
  
He really didn't like Captain Jack. He didn't like the man's huge ego. He didn't like the way his teeth gleamed when he smiled. He didn't like the stories of how he had sex with someone new each week, he didn't like the slight feeling of wrongness that radiated from him and seemed to increase his headaches.  
  
He was also practically repulsed by the idea of people thinking anything other than that he hated Captain Jack.  
  
He still took the job at Torchwood when the arrogant prick offered it to him with that big ego and gleamy smile of his.

 

He had had good plans in his life.  
  
The Doctor may disagree on the sentiment, but he was sure of it; some of his plans had been good, even though they tended to backfire. Some of them even might have worked, if it wasn't for the Doctor.  
  
Some of them weren't so good.  
  
He sighed, feeling another headache advancing.  
  
Well, this wasn't one of his best, let's leave it at that. To actually make the Doctor feel better, he would have to let her _know_ she didn't really kill a child.  
  
To let her know, he had to find her first – which usually was the least of his problems, because usually causing havoc was enough to make her spawn like an angry bossfight at the end of your video game (who'd then one-hit you with a disarming smile and leave you to either try again or rage quit). But to actually make her feel better... Well, blowing up planets wasn't on the menu today.  
  
So instead he decided to cling to trouble and see if she'd come around.  
  
And he absolutely wasn't sick of it.  
  
At all.  
  
  
  
Maybe a little bit sick of it.  
  
He stuck around Torchwood, because really, they didn't manage to do much without him, but they _did_ know how to cause trouble.  
  
With a sigh he pondered on whether he should tell Jack that Ianto hid a half converted Cyberwoman in their cellar or not. Probably not, though. He was in desperate need of some fun and watching this play out might actually reduce his headaches. And so he grimly drank the coffee Ianto made him, trying to deal with the noise that exploded in his head and seemed to grow louder every morning he woke up.  
  
  
  
  
“You know,“ Jack said with one of his gleamy smiles that instantly enhanced the pounding in the Master's head. “It's good to have this. I'm sure you get what I mean. I've been abandoned myself. Torchwood has become like a family to me, a family of strays, bound together.”  
  
The Master fought the urge to roll his eyes. He usually didn't. Mostly, all he contributed to this “family of strays“ were eye rolls, snarky comments and occasional brilliant ideas that served the mere purpose of letting Jack know why exactly he kept him around.   
  
But he feared the Captain wouldn't like what he had to say at all, so he kept his mouth shut.  
  
He kept his mouth shut about Suzie Castello, who got so consumed by greed and the idea of eternal life that she had betrayed her “family “.  
  
He kept his mouth shut about Toshiko, who was clearly struggling with depression, because she had felt invisible and underappreciated all her life, unnoticed by her “family“.  
  
He kept on keeping his mouth shut when it came to Ianto, who embraced his invisibility because it gave him the opportunity of hiding away his deadly girlfriend right in front of their noses.  
  
He didn't even comment on Gwen, who cheated on her partner with members of Jack's “family“, in constant need to push her overly big ego.   
  
He had learned to keep his mouth shut very, very early in his life. He wasn't one to make conversation out of other people's weaknesses; oh no, he observed, he saw, he understood and then, when he needed to, he used what he knew.  
  
Right now though, all he wanted to use was something against that headache of his. Too bad Aspirin was fatal for Time Lords.  
  
  
  
  
A Cyberwoman killing a scientist and threatening to destroy the whole not-so-secret hub of Torchwood under her old friend's watch was not enough to bring the Doctor back to Earth, apparently. Not that he had expected it to be. She wasn't there for the little things; she wasn't there for a hero standing on a crossroads to good and evil, she was only there to condemn their choice afterwards. She was there to save the day, and nothing else. It had to hurt and burn and sting, there had to be tears, there had to be blood, there had to be a mess, because if the Doctor ever bothered with solving any of a friend's emotional issues, she might have to face her own-and that she couldn't do.  
  
And now Ianto lay crying in a corner, blood-soaked and lost, so lost and Jack stood in another corner, thinking, pondering, and equally lost, lost and standing at a crossroads the Doctor had stood at a thousand times before him. She might have been able to show him the way.  
  
And through it all, the Master wondered if he cared. He couldn't tell for sure because his head throbbed so much it numbed his thoughts.  
  
  


In hindsight, maybe he did. He didn't tell Jack any of that while he watched him flirt with Gwen, sleep with Ianto, and kiss a man whose identity he stole. Maybe he did care, and maybe he did because the wrong side had won and for the first time, he had been on the right one. Maybe he cared because he could see what Jack never saw. Ianto, poor, invisible Ianto, had done everything in his power to protect what he loved while Jack simply threw it away. Every bit of love he received, all he had to give, all those who cared, he pushed them away again and again and ran to the next distraction, the next person he could love only to throw them away again.  
  
Having loved only one person in all of his lives, it was hard for the Master to understand. He did have a concept of loyalty. It might be fucked up and twisted and dark and it might result in pushing the Doctor over the edge one too many times, but if she could be sure about one thing, she could be sure that he would never even consider loving someone else.   
  
And so it was hard to watch Ianto's hurt face whenever the man he swore to never love ran away with someone else again.  
  
“I wish he was still the monster I used to think he was,“ Ianto said one night when no one else was around and he had seen the Master's gazes for what they were – had seen that he was being noticed.  
  
“He still is,“ the Master replied calmly. “You just learned to love it.“  
  


 

His head was killing him. Jack had the decency to be worried, but the Master was utterly convinced that his presence only made things worse. He felt so  _ wrong _ , did he even know?  
  
“Go away,“ he grumbled into his pillow.  
  
“Hey, you didn't show up for work, it's my right to look after you. Actually, seeing you now, maybe you should let Owen check if you're...“  
  
“I'm fine, I'm having headaches. Go away.“  
  
Jack frowned, which  probably looked incredibly handsome, but was totally lost on the Master, who still had his face buried in his pillow.   
  
“You had headaches since you started at Torchwood. Have they gotten worse?“  
  
The Master couldn't resist  sitting up, only to throw Jack a glance of dripping sarcasm. “Wasn't there someone called Captain Obvious whose name you could've stolen?“

Jack grinned. “I'm just saying - this is worrying, you know?“  
  
“You are worrying,“ the Master retorted. “You are all wrong, and you're making my head spin, that's all.“  
  
Again Jack frowned, this time the Master saw. He didn't find it incredibly handsome at all. It was just as annoying as the gleamy teeth.  
  
“What are you talking about?“  
  
With a sigh, the Master decided the secrecy wasn't worth the amount of pain it caused. “All your mysterious talk about 'The right kind of Doctor' being able to fix you? Bullshit- let me tell you, she can't. You're a fixed point in time and space and I have no idea how she managed to do that to you but everything about you is wrong and you make a Time Lord's whole being _sick_. That's why she abandoned you, and she's not coming back. Now, please. go away.“  
  
Jack stared at him, completely frozen. He seemed to have a million questions on his mind; at least that's what the Master took from his mouth gaping open.  
  
After a few seconds of silence, however, the only thing Jack asked was: “She?“  


 

  
He missed her. He even missed her rage, her hurt, her nightmares, he missed all the awful parts of being with her. He had missed her before; he had been away before, but it had never been this bad and he wondered why that was. Maybe because he had finally accepted he loved her. Maybe because his head wouldn't let him sleep, wouldn't let him think, because she was his only focus left, the only thing that kept him sane. Whatever it was, it hurt, it hurt almost more than the noise in his head.   
  
His eyes were dry and itchy, his head pounded relentlessly, and his thoughts felt fuzzy. The only thing he knew was that, damn, he missed her.  
  
“Theta,“ he whispered, even though he couldn't hear his own voice. He imagined that somewhere, out in the universe, she'd hear his pain and she'd come.  
  
  
  
She didn't come when he got almost torn apart by a Pterodactyl.  
  
She didn't come when he lay awake night after night, having taken a break from Torchwood, only to realize the noise in his head wasn't caused by Jack and that it had come to stay.  
  
She didn't come when he got almost torn apart by a Pterodactyl _again_ , only to get told that “Myfanwy just wants to play“.   
  
She didn't come when they opened a crack that threatened to devour all of Cardiff. (He couldn't blame her, either. Who cared about Cardiff anyway?)   
  
She didn't come when Jack got buried alive by his own brother, while Toshiko and Owen both bled to death and the Master decided that maybe he liked Jack after all; mostly because he didn't have any reason to show that gleamy smile of his that often anymore.  
  
She came after Jack had decided to sacrifice his own grandchild in order to save 10 percent of the world's children.*  
  
And he'd never seen her in more terror than he had in that moment.

 

He saw her frozen in horror, her face in shock, her eyes wide open.  
  
He saw Jack lying on the ground, crying and shouting in pain.  
  
He saw the child's mother screaming and trying to beat every inch she could reach of Jack.  
  
He didn't hear a sound.  
  
In his head, the drums had turned into something that could only be described as cannon shots, drowning out everything else.  
  
He cringed in pain, his head dizzy and his sight blurry, and he almost fell to the ground, but he could see the Doctor, she was so close and still in focus. With ragged breathing, he tried to get to her, but then another cannon shot thundered and threw him back. He wanted to scream, but when he opened his mouth, there was no air left to make a sound.  
  
He saw her stepping forward; there was pity on her face- he hated pity but he was ready to take it, and kindness, and he could almost feel relief wash over him, he was going to be okay, it was going to be okay. She was finally there and somehow he knew, he just knew, when she reached him, it would all go away.  
  
  
She was stepping right past him, taking Jack into her arms.  
  
And with a fourth gunshot exploding in his head, the Master simply blacked out and sunk to the ground.

 


	10. Thick as Thieves

  _Evidently we can't work it out_  
_I guess that courage ain't allowed_  
_Evidently you're not in the mood_  
_And everything I say just bothers you_

  _And guilty I may be_  
_But don't give up on me_  
_In the wake of the Odyssey_  
_We will still be thick as thieves_

 

[ Shinedown - Thick as Thieves ]

 

 

 When he woke up, everything was quiet. The noise in his head had subsided and the world around him seemed to have come to a halt.  
  
They were back in the TARDIS. He remembered lying in this spot last time.  
  
Jack sat in a corner, mindlessly sipping tea, the shock still clear on his face. Gwen sat beside him, but he noticed a bit of distance between them. He could tell from the look on Jack's face that the immortal was about to leave. Leave all of this behind and start a new life, some place where he hadn't as much to lose.  
  
The Master must've shown that look on his own face a million times, but by now he knew that the past would always come back to haunt him.  
  
The Doctor knelt beside him, a blank expression on her face, eyes staring into nothing. He grunted and sat up cautiously, hoping to see some kind of reaction, but it was like she didn't even see him.  
  
Apparently she still did, though, because she got to her feet shortly after.  
  
“You're coming with me. Apparently it's not safe to let you wander off alone,“ she said in a cold voice.  
  
The Master frowned. “Wait. What? What did I do this time?“  
  
“It's not about what you did,“ the Doctor replied, and he could see all the suppressed anger boiling in her usually warm brown eyes. “But about what you didn't do.“  
  
He just stared, waiting for her to explode because he knew it wouldn't take long.  
  
It didn't.  
  
“You could have stopped this!“ she shouted in his face. “You could've helped them! This child could've lived! Everyone could have lived!“  
  
“I could?“ he said, stunned.  
  
“Well, you are brilliant, are you not?“  
  
There were tears in her eyes. He realized that one more dead child was more than she could take. He realized she thought it was her fault, for not being there in time, for not being there at all, for letting him be there.  
  
“Usually,“ he replied slowly, trying to remain calm. “I didn't do this on purpose, I just couldn't think straight.“  
  
“Oh how convenient!“ she spat. “Next you're going to tell me you cared about the child, aren't you? That you would've saved him if it wasn't for your _headache_.“  
  
Somewhere, in the back of his head, he wanted to shout. It was the same corner of his head where the drums were back at it again, pounding like a heartbeat, only more permanent.  
  
_If my hearts stop beating, will they still be?_ he wondered, but stopped thinking about it the same second.  
  
The idea of an answer scared him.  
  
“She isn't dead,“ he explained calmly, instead of shouting. “The child that fell down the cliff? She isn't dead. I went there before we did. She's safe.“  
  
She stared at him, face still angry, mouth hanging half-open.  
  
“Are you insane?“ she finally choked out. “You could've torn the whole universe apart.“  
  
“Hardly,“ he retorted. “I knew what I was doing.“  
  
She snorted. “Oh, like you did today?“  
  
“How is this my fault?“ he wanted to know, raising his voice now after all. “Of all the people involved, how am I the one being blamed? I fought against this!“  
  
“Because you could've stopped it! You could've stopped it and you didn't!“  
  
He was ready to shout back, he had already taken a deep breath, but Jack stepped between them, still looking tired, but at least he seemed to be back in his right mind.  
  
“Doctor,“ he said calmly. “Where's Rose?“  
  
The Master stopped dead. He hadn't considered the girl, but Jack was right, she wasn't here. He looked around frantically, scared of what he was going to hear.  
  
The Doctor just stared at Jack blankly. “Gone.“  
  
God, Jack looked so tired. Even he felt tired, tired of watching her lose again and again. All he could think of was _Don't ask her, don't ask her,_ but of course they needed to know, so Jack did anyway.  
  
“What happened?“  
  
“Torchwood,“ she replied and Jack paled.  
  
The Master thought of Ianto, poor lost Ianto, clinging to his last hope, hiding a Cyberwoman in their archives, pretending she was still his love, still alive.  
  
_Please don't_ , he thought, but knew at the same time that his prayers had no use.  
  
He thought of the emptiness he had seen in the young man after he had been forced to let go. He thought about seeing him come back to life with Jack, only to be killed in his lover's arms.  
  
And he decided that he was sick of it. Sick of suffering, sick of pain, sick of losing and seeing those lose who deserved to win. He had enough. It was enough.  
  
And while the Doctor told Jack the story of how Rose got dragged into a parallel universe, trapped on the other side as Torchwood was left in ruins - ruins Jack had used to rebuild it – he made a promise.  
  
He had saved the kid and it didn't matter, it didn't matter, because she had lost so much more while he had been gone.  
  
Well, he wouldn't go again.  
  
And he would get Rose back.  
  
He barely noticed he made the same promise Ianto must've once given the love of his life, the same desperate, hopeless promise. He wasn't going to fail, it wasn't an option. He was the Master and he would rip open the skies, if it brought back the Doctor's smile.

  
Jack didn't want to come with them. He said he needed some time alone and the Master knew what that really meant. Being away from judgement, from having to look in a constant mirror, living somewhere far off from everyone who knew you, just drinking and someday maybe even laughing again, without the guilt. He knew the feeling, he'd been there. And he knew just as well as Jack that there was no real escape. So he didn't mention it.  
  
When they said their goodbyes and the Master awkwardly offered his hand, Jack took it and looked into his eyes seriously.  
  
“Remember when you told me who you are? When you said she didn't care?“  
  
How could he forget? The night he had laid in his bed, feeling like screaming, feeling so lost and Jack had been there, listened to all he had to say, to all the insults and cruel truths he could come up with, listened to all he had to say about the Doctor, his love badly veiled in spiteful words.  
  
“I was wrong,“ he replied hoarsely. Jack didn't need to rub it in; he got it, he got it the second she stepped past him. He had told Jack that she didn't care about them.  “She does care about you-“  
  
Jack shook his head slowly and there was the ghost of his old, stupid, teeth-gleaming smile. The Master looked at it and knew he was going to be okay. Jack was going to go through hell and come out again, alive, strong and kinder than before. Jack was better than him in every way and the Doctor knew, oh she knew.  
  
“Maybe, yeah,“ Jack said. “But she also cares about you, you know?“  
  
The Master shook his head, wanted to interrupt him, but Jack would have none of that.  
  
“No, she really does. You should've seen her after you passed out, she was with you before you even hit the ground.“  
  
He couldn't help it, he just stared. “But-“  
  
“No buts, shut up,“ Jack joked, weakly. It told a lot about the Master's confusion, that he actually did shut up.  
  
“I don't know what you did to her, I don't know what hurt her this much, but you should consider that someone only hurts if they care."  
  
“I- the Master began, but was interrupted one more time.  
  
“Just promise me to do better, yeah? She deserves it.“  
  
“I'm trying,“ he blurted out before he could stop himself. “I'm trying, but she won't let me, she just...“  
  
“She's scared,“ Jack explained calmly.  
  
There was a little silence where the two of them just looked at each other and the Master wondered when he had started to like Jack. Maybe it was just the drums messing up his head. He hoped it was. Because really, Jack didn't even feel _that_ wrong any more, and that couldn't be right. Right?  
  
“Me too,“ the Master whispered. “I'm scared too.“  
  
“I know.“ Jack laid a hand on his shoulder and forced himself to smile. “To tell you a secret... Me too. But maybe we need to face these fears to leave them behind. I wouldn't know. I've always been a coward.“  
  
And with that, he moved on, into the night, not leaving the Master any chance to tell him, he really didn't think he was a coward _at all.  
_  
_Wise man,_ the Master thought. I would've stabbed him if he tried to hug me like he hugged the Doctor.  
  
_Good man,_ a second voice in his head answered with a hiss. _Bothering with your problems as if he hadn't enough of his own.  
_  
He sighed and looked up at the night sky.  
  
_Every star in the universe,_ a third voice whispered, and it was almost alright for a second. All his insecurity, the fears and worries, they all disappeared when he remembered he wasn't fighting for a stranger's affection, he was fighting for Theta Sigma; the smartest kid he'd ever met, the light in his night sky, the boy that had chosen him with the warmest smile he'd ever seen, the boy that had run with him. His soulmate.  
  
_Soulmate_ , a fourth voice repeated, almost contentedly, and it took the Master three whole days to realize that this one hadn't been one of his.  
  
  
  
He started to work day and night. The drums in his head wouldn't always let him concentrate on the matter at hand, but he tried his best to drown them out as often as he could. Work helped, sometimes. It kept his mind occupied and banned distracting thoughts. Since the Doctor didn't talk to him much these days, he could easily avoid their awkward silences by staying in his room and working.  
  
_Silence_ , he thought with an inner snort. Like he could have actual silence with that head of his pounding away without interruption.  
  
He grew more and more tetchy the longer he worked. It was hard, precise work that needed a lot of planning. A device wrongly wired could tear the universe apart; and that risk hadn't exactly sent the Doctor falling on her knees in gratitude last time he had taken it.  
  
Had she actually listened, had she actually cared - she would've been able to hear him smashing prototypes by throwing them through the room, letting them crash against the wall, exasperated.  
  
“ _You are brilliant, are you not?“_ she had asked, and it kept him going, kept him from giving up trying, even though he more and more felt like a failure – she thought he was brilliant and of course he was, he was, he could do anything, he had beaten her in mechanics and construction by lengths. He was also failing massively.  
  
Nothing worked like it ought to; his hands trembled from the efforts of keeping the drums at bay, his plans were a mess, with stupid slip ups every time he tried to construct a new one, and whenever he took a break, he felt himself growing angrier and angrier at the Doctor's reaction to his help.  
  
Hadn't he tried everything to make her feel better? Hadn't he left her behind, broken his own hearts, had risked the universe to save that child _she_ had brought into danger? Hadn't he stuck around Torchwood, taken care of Earth as well as he could? He didn't expect forgiveness, he had long given up on it, but how did he end up the bad guy once again? Was that all she'd ever see in him?  
  
Maybe she was right, he thought one night, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out a mechanical problem and instead thinking about her face again, her face when she had come back into his life, the terror, the pain, the anger.  
  
Maybe it was all he was. Maybe, after everything that had happened, there was no way out of it any more, no way to become a better person, a person she could love. Maybe all he'd ever be able to do was bring more horror into her life. Hurt her over and over again.  
  
There was no one else to answer him except for the drums in his head, numbing his thoughts with a sinister beat that told him to give in into bloodshed, that wanted nothing more but lead him back into the darkness that had been his only home for far too long.  
  
He closed his eyes.  
  
Not today.  
  
  
  
_It was a hot day. He wondered how there could be sun on a day as dark as this one. Dust was everywhere around him; it whirled through the wind like leaves on a warm autumn day, found a way into his eyes, his throat, settled on him like a second skin._ _  
  
It was alright though. He had chosen this place as his grave. He didn't mind it claiming him; he welcomed it, already feeling dead inside.  
  
Or hoping for it, because there still was panic, there was shaking of his hands, there was so much tiredness. It sat in every single bone of his body, eating away at him slowly.  
He went in. He looked around. He recognized the place faintly as something that used to be home, used to be the start of something that should never been.  
  
He remembered lying here, in the darkness, scared and crying, every night.  
  
He remembered finding a family here that was so much more welcoming than his real one.  
  
And now he'd make his last memories in here, glad that he wouldn't remember dying. No one would.  
  
Suddenly the wind howled. The dust of the desert reared up like a huge, wild dog, ready to devour the whole barn and him within it. The darkness came suddenly and was all-consuming, seemed to __envelop_ _him. His hearts beat, they beat so fast and he didn't know why when all he really wanted was for them to stop.  
  
His hands trembled and shook, everything got cold and then -  
  
Glaring, burning light, red as flames and his world disappeared into the fire, never returning, gone forever. The only thing that was still real were screams, echoing in his mind, again and again, never ceasing, like ghosts forever imprisoned inside his head, doomed to scream forever, trapped in a spiral of pain and death.  
  
_ When he woke up, he still heard them scream, until he realized it was him that had made the sound. His face was wet from tears that weren't his own, his hearts almost beat out of his chest and his breathing was ragged.  
  
_These aren't my memories_ , something inside him yelled completely lost in panic. Panic that _wasn't his._ And without wasting another second, he jumped to his feet and ran to the Doctor's bedroom.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With a lot of love to my beta Zedrobber (check them out!), who's my literal lifesaver <3


	11. Call it what you want

_All my flowers grew back as thorns,_   
_Windows boarded up after the storm.._   
_He built a fire just to keep me warm._

[ Taylor Swift - Call it what you want ]

 

 

She was still asleep when he entered, tossing and turning in her sheets with beads of sweat on her pale face.

He didn’t even take his time to think; he simply rushed to her side and took her hand in his, trying his best to focus on her mind and send her some peace. The drums in his head were still pounding away, but he was too distracted to even notice them.

Here the mighty Master sat, on his knees, his forehead laid on the Doctor’s hand, his eyes closed in concentration. He could still feel her fear and pain running through his whole body like they were his own, producing adrenaline he didn’t ask for.

He remembered wondering how it would feel, blowing up Gallifrey and the Daleks alike, being the most powerful man in the whole universe for a few, awful seconds. He wasn’t wondering anymore, only wishing, wishing he had never known.

But this thought wouldn’t bring her peace. He focused on something else, instead. Focused on something that had been unfamiliar to him for almost all his life, something that only she had shown to him. And even though she had taken it all back, he still somehow found it in his hearts, gave her all the love and forgiveness he could muster up and sent it through their link. He tried his best to push away the drums in his head, locking them up deep in his own mind, keeping them away from her.

He thought of velvet suits and silly little capes, he thought of a scarf longer than his list of failures, he thought of celery in places where it definitely didn’t belong, of the most horrendous taste in clothes he had ever seen anyone acting on, he thought of rolling r’s and of curls framing a puppyish face that he had betrayed not too far in the past. 

And he remembered his love for all of them (yes, even the one with the horrendous outfit), reminding her that she wasn’t alone, that she was forgiven, that she was the centre of someone else’s universe in the only way he could.

He felt tears in his eyes and quickly lifted his face from her hand, so he wouldn’t wake her up. That’s when he saw that her breathing had calmed, and her face had taken on a more tranquil expression.

With a sigh, he turned around a bit, not letting go of her hand, and leant his back against the bedside. He stayed with her until he felt her dream state slip and then quickly sneaked out of the room. Before his head even touched his own pillow, he had sunk into a deep sleep.

 

 

The Master woke up again when the TARDIS came to a sudden halt. His eyes still felt heavy and dry, he couldn’t have slept for more than an hour. His head hurt. Confused, he tumbled out of the bed and towards the control room.  
  
The Doctor stood in front of the exit, seeming to wait for him without turning around.  
  
“Why… why are we here?” the Master asked sleepily, after having a look at the monitors and realizing he had no idea where “here” was.

“Why not?” the Doctor asked, her tone cold. “Do you have anywhere else to be?”

Trying to remain calm, the Master answered, “We’re both exhausted. And after everything that happened, we should take a…”  
“I don’t need a break,” the Doctor remarked shortly, then rushed out of the TARDIS, not even waiting for the Master to see if he joined her.  
With a sigh, he looked down at himself.  
Cursing, he put his head through the door. He caught a short glimpse of a dark, wet cave and rolled his eyes. Great prospects.

“I’m not going to save this planet in pyjamas, so wait two minutes, will you?” he called after the Doctor, then returned to his bedroom to put on some proper – black – clothes.

When he came back, she stood still close to the TARDIS doors, giving him a thoughtful look.

“You’re going to save this planet?” she finally asked with a raised eyebrow.

The Master shrugged, trying to hide how uncomfortable he felt under her suddenly so attentive eyes.

“Sure,” he said. “With you around, don’t we always?”

Before she could answer, there suddenly appeared people behind her, who grabbed her without a word. The Master reacted within a second, jumped towards them and was ready to defend the Doctor with claws and teeth, but was grabbed from behind and held in place. Struggling, he could do nothing but watch when they stuffed the Doctor’s arm into a hole in a machine and activated it.

“Hey!” he shouted, and his voice thundered back from the walls. “Leave her alone or I swear, I will tear you apart!”

She turned to look at him, worried, but his pounding hearts calmed down when he examined the machine further.

“They’re taking samples of my diploid cells,” the Doctor explained with a look on her face that told him she wasn’t really sure what to think of it.

The Master looked to his left, where a huge cabinet lit up. They were… creating a living being with the Doctor’s DNA?

“Oh, this is going to be just great…,” he grumbled. “Now there’s two of them.”

-

He liked the girl instantly. He didn’t want to. In his head, the drums were pounding away, he was tense and annoyed, but it was like she lit up the room in a way that the Doctor used to. In a way, she was just another reminder of what he had done to the woman he loved.

And yet… He couldn’t help himself. It wasn’t _just_ that they had created a woman from the Doctor’s DNA, it was everything about her. It was her, jumping out of the pod, looking happy to be alive. Her grabbing the guns despite her the Doctor’s protests and shooting down the threat without even so much as blinking. It was her not accepting the guilt the Doctor was trying to talk her into, and instead mirroring it back, showing her that they weren’t that different just because they had their own perception of morals.

The Master gulped. He had never had a child, but if he and the Doctor had ever had one, it might have been exactly like her and the thought both thrilled and scared him. For one fleeting second, he realized once again how similar they were, only separated by which path they had chosen for themselves.

Soulmates, they used to call it. It was as if he had forgotten why until now.

They ended up in a prison cell. The Master wasn’t even sure why, it just seemed to be a regular thing that happened when one was with the Doctor. She didn’t seem all too bothered, casually leant against a wall, watching the girl – Jenny, she had called her – cautiously.  

Like a cat, eyeing an abandoned kitten, contemplating whether to take her in or not.

He sighed.

“What is it?” Jenny asked after a while of heavy-handed silence. “Why is she looking at me like this?”

The Master rolled his eyes.

“You used a gun. That’s usually how she decides she doesn’t like you. But since you’re her daughter…”

“She is not my daughter!” came the prompt response. “Just because they took my DNA and turned it into a person…”

“What? That is usually how it’s done, isn’t it? Ever heard of looming?”

“Oh, shut up!” the Doctor replied with an eye-roll. “This is not Gallifrey, this wasn’t a loom.”

The Master gently reached for the girl’s wrist and felt her pulse with calm fingers. He held it towards the Doctor.

“Two separate pulses,” he explained, because she didn’t even move a single muscle. “Two hearts.”

He could see something flicker up inside the Doctor’s eyes, when she finally reached out and felt her daughter’s pulses. Conflict, pain, wild hope, everything got mirrored in those expressive, brown eyes and for a second, he felt his own hearts sinking.

He knew what she was thinking of. The family she had had, the children she had watched grow up until the war had torn it all away from her. The Master had never considered them with anything other than jealousy and hatred, but right now he managed to see past all this to the Doctor’s own pain and loss. Here was a new chance for her and she was too afraid to take it. Too afraid to lose all over again.

“What does that mean? Two hearts?” Jenny asked with wide eyes. The Master smirked when he saw the Doctor fight with herself, before she hesitantly answered.

“It means you’re a Time Lord. Like us. I… think. Maybe half a Time Lord? I’m not sure if this device is able to recreate our whole biology. We’re a bit more complex than humans. Still. I suppose, if you have two hearts…”

He had to hand it to Jenny, she really wasn’t having the grumpy mood that had settled between them. She looked at the Doctor with a wide grin and a confident look in her eyes that showed she didn’t fear her mother’s bitter answers. And why would she, he thought, while rubbing his forehead in hopes of relieving his headache. She wasn’t mad at Jenny, she was hurt and scared and mad at herself.

He watched the Doctor carefully, while she shared some first shaky smiles with her daughter. She might be just what she needed, what he was trying so desperately to give to her. A new start, someone to care for, someone who could get through all the walls she had built around herself and bring her back to her old self.

Jenny wasn’t scared of that task. Jenny had nothing to fear. Jenny didn’t know how her mother could use words as weapons, the Doctor had nothing could stab both her hearts on the tip of her tongue.

The pain in his head was slowly becoming unbearable. Deciding to focus on something productive to distract himself from the bloody drums, he turned to the bars, looking out to the single guard they had positioned, a little boy, nothing more.

He snorted.

“So, how are we going to do this?”

The Doctor shrugged, arms crossed in front of her chest. “We lure him close, then knock him out. Standard procedure.”

“You do this a lot?” Jenny asked excitedly.

The Doctor laughed. “Once or twice a week. Sometimes twice on Saturdays. If I have a _really_ stupid opponent.”

“Oh, come on!” the Master grumbled. “Only happened once!”

“At least four times!”

“Yes, okay, but I always _expected_ you to get out of it! It’s part of the fun!”

“Sure you did. You loved failing every single one of your plans.”

He stared at her with his lips tight together, looking for a good come back while absolutely not sulking at all.

Jenny barged in and spared him from answering.

“Can I do it? I have an idea!”

The Doctor nodded with a smile. “Go ahead then.”

 

He had not expected the girl to start making out with the kid.

“What, what, what, what was that?” he sputtered as soon as she had finished with a triumphant look on her face, the kid lying unconscious at her feet and a key dangling from her fingers.

“It worked!” Jenny proclaimed with a wide smile.

“Yeah, but, but, but…” he turned around to the Doctor, who didn’t seem to bother. She had pushed open the door that led them out of the cell and waited for them to join her.

“Off we go then! Got a war to stop!”

He stared at her in utter disbelief. “She…”

“Yeah, I saw.”

“But…”

“What’s the big deal?” Jenny laughed while rushing out next to him.

He stepped over the unconscious boy, reminding himself that this girl wasn’t his child and could kiss whoever she wanted. Still, he thought while the drums were pounding away in his mind. “What’s the big deal” could only come from someone who had never experienced being desperately in love with someone and then thrown away because they could do so much better.

 

They made their way through the underground system of aisles and shelters, trying to figure out what all the fuss was about. Well, the Doctor was, the Master wasn’t really all that focused on the details. His head swam in pain, making him feel testy and frantic. Instead of concentrating on the war that seemed to be going on around them, he focused on the Doctor, trying to get some hold of himself while his mind screamed for blood. She was here, she was his anchor, he just had to follow her and keep the last shreds of his sanity together.

Once in a while some details managed to find their way through his wall of pain and anger. The weird fish people and the humanoids were in some kind of eternal war for a weapon, but the eternal war turned out to be just seven days old and that was when he had stopped listening. It was idiots forgetting their own history because they had created genetic mutations of themselves as soldiers to fight a war they didn’t know anything about.

It was _ridiculous_.

Why, he wondered, why did she like the humans so much, when all they did was mindlessly shed blood. He loved mindlessly shedding blood and it had brought him nothing but loneliness and despair while she had moved further and further away from him – to _them_.

Jenny seemed seriously disturbed by the whole situation.

“Seven days… but… All of this?”

The Doctor’s eyes radiated compassion while she laid her hands on Jenny’s shoulders.

“You see, that’s why sometimes it’s important to ask the right questions instead of just shooting. A war that’s only seven days old can be stopped. It’ll stop today. We just have to find the source.”

“What will you do then?” Jenny asked and for the first time she looked openly sad. “Will you just… leave?”

“I… suppose…” the Doctor said with a quiet voice. “It’s what I do. Can’t stay here, really. Too much left to fix in the universe.”

The Master supressed the urge to roll his eyes.

“Take her with you,” he suggested as calmly as he could manage.

She threw him a sharp glance, but he just shrugged. He felt anger rising up in his stomach without anything to stop it, anything that could’ve even caused it. His nerves were tingling, but he kept as calm as he could manage.

“She can help you. You know she can. You’re not good on your own. And you can help her learn all this stuff you like so much, you know, the peaceful stuff.”

The Doctor was trying to avoid his look, unfortunately for her, it made her look straight into Jenny’s hopeful eyes. He could watch how her sincere affection melted away all of the Doctor’s resolve.

Well, good.

“I suppose, if you want to come… Nothing wrong with that, really.”

With a happy squeak, Jenny had thrown herself around her mother’s neck, laughing like a ray of sunshine. The Doctor held her tightly for a few seconds and he could see her closing her eyes just for a moment, fighting tears she didn’t want to show.

What he hadn’t expected, though, was Jenny hopping straight from this hug into his arms, whispering tiny little “thank you, thank you, thank you!”s into his ear. He gulped, unsure what to do and awkwardly patted her back.

For one second, the unrelenting headache faded into the background and the Master began to realize that this girl might be able to help both of them. He blinked away tears, not sure where they came from in the first place, while Jenny ran off into the room the Doctor had opened for them, fearless and excited for what was to come.

He glanced at the Doctor and felt his hearts jumping when he caught the little, hesitant smile meant just for him.

Yeah, he thought. She was their chance, their new beginning. Maybe everything wasn't lost after all.

And these thoughts held the drums at bay, until a gunshot tore through the quiet, green oasis. _  
_


End file.
